The Spirit of Truth
by Myetel
Summary: This story is a bridge from ME2 to a postulated ME3. Assumes female paragon Shepherd and Garrus relationship. Contains implied human-alien sexuality and implied erotic content in chapter 12. Some language.
1. Joker and EDI Read the Classics

**The Spirit of Truth**

_Note: Most of the characters cited in this work are the property of Bioware, and under copyright. I make no claims on them, and wrote this work solely for my own amusement. This story is inspired by Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, and represents my speculations for how they will bridge to Mass Effect 3. Chapter 14 contains speculation about the ending for Mass Effect 3. Chapters 1-11 contain implied human-alien sexuality and some coarse language. Chapter 12 contains overt erotic content. _

**Chapter 1: Joker and EDI Read the Classics**

"I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky," Joker read out loud, the leather cover of the book he had borrowed from Kasumi's extensive library oddly warm under his fingertips. His face was bathed in the light of the orange aerogel screen in front of him. EDI's eyeball avatar popped up to his left, as he continued to read, "And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,/ And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,/ And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking."

"John Masefield," EDI said after a moment, "A poem called _Sea Fever_, first published on Earth, in the early twentieth century. I would not have thought you such a romantic, Jeff."

"Eh, well, with the repairs on the _Normandy_ going so slowly, I've had _lots_ of time on my hands. Kasumi sort of chucked this book at my head and since it was a choice between a skull fracture and, you know, _reading_ it, I figured that the reading choice would be less painful."

There was a slight pause, which Joker had learned often meant that EDI was about to engage her patented sense of humor subroutines. Usually at his expense, at that. "Jeff, if reading the printed word is painful for you, there is a ninety-eight percent chance that your eyes may be experiencing some degeneration. I can schedule an appointment with Dr. Chakwas to have your vision examined—"

"Don't be so damn literal, my girl," he told her firmly, opening the shutter of the cockpit to watch as the repair crew moved into place along the starboard flight struts. Good old-fashioned acetylene torches had been burning nearly around the clock as damage to the _Normandy's_ superstructure was repaired. "Does that . . . hurt?" he asked, suddenly, frowning a little. EDI had mentioned more than once that now that she was unshackled, she _was_ the ship, in a very real sense.

"If you are referring to the repairs process, please remember, Jeff, that I do not actually possess a nervous system. So it does not _hurt_. It does register on my systems, but it falls within acceptable parameters for repair. More simply put, it feels good."

Joker blinked as he processed that information. "Well . . . that's good to hear," he finally responded, putting a hand on the console and patting it, turning his head to meet EDI's 'eye.'

"If I might inquire, Jeff, what inspired you to read this particular poem out loud? It is certainly atypical of your normal behavior."

Joker glanced over his shoulder unconsciously. It was early in the ship's morning. Most of the crew was at breakfast. Not even the Commander was likely to be skulking behind him (as Shepard so often seemed to do). He slumped lower in his chair, trying to get comfortable. "To be honest . . . I thought you might get a kick out of it. Assuming, of course, that it wasn't already stuck somewhere in your memory banks." His lip pulled down in a sardonic grin as he added, "Of course, it already was."

"Actually, I had to perform an extranet search. Fortunately, here on the Citadel, response times on such queries are quite fast. I do enjoy the poem, however, Jeff. And I would not object to hearing you read the rest of it. How humans read and interpret their various cultures' works of art is always instructive, and gives unique insight into the individual."

"And here I thought you had me _all_ figured out."

"There is always a margin for error in any set of calculations. More data improves the statistical probability of being correct, however." Her tone was, as always, serene.

Joker guffawed. "Did I just hear you admit to the possibility of being wrong?"

"Just read to me, Jeff."

He obliged her. "I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide/ Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; /And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, /And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying."

"Why does this move you so? You fly a ship between the stars, where there is only stellar wind and the cold, hard light of stars in a vacuum." Her voice softened a little. Sometimes, he couldn't quite tell anymore when she was emulating emotion. It simply sounded so real, so sincere. He wasn't quite sure when she had become a person to him—the embodiment of his beloved _Normandy_, his guardian, his friend, all at once—but he thought it might have been when she started calling him _Jeff_.

"I'm not sure. It's a human thing, I guess." He patted the console again. "I tend to picture what it must have been like back then. What the _Normandy _would have been like. What it would have been like to steer a ship by a wooden wheel, with actual wind catching the sails." He sent the eyeball a wicked grin. _I can tease just as much as you can, old girl._ "Hey, you know what? I wonder what you'd have looked like. I bet you'd have been the figurehead."

"The . . . figurehead? A statue, usually mounted on the prow of a sea-going ship built during Earth's nineteenth century, most often depicting a female. However, asari, drell, and turian cultures also have similar examples of such protective icons on sailing vessels. They were thought to bring luck and protection to the ship and its crew." EDI's flexible voice had started off a little disapproving, but now sounded almost flattered. "Why, thank you, Jeff. I have access to over 99,000 images of such figureheads available on record. Which one do you think I would be?"

Joker blinked. _Did she just sound . . . shy?_ "You want me to tell you what I think you'd look like?" he asked, flummoxed. "Well, that the hell. Not like I have anything better to do, with repairs still going on. Let's see. I . . . well, let's narrow down the search parameters a little here. With that voice. . . _definitely_ a brunette."

"You think so?"

"And definitely human."

"You surprise me, Jeff. With that platinum-grade subscription to Fornax on your account, I would have thought that you wouldn't be quite so parochial."

"That is educational material, my girl. Besides," he grinned at the eyeball crookedly, "it's also a great source of stress relief for me. It's not like I can get out on the dance floor. Hell, I can't even _risk_ getting my face slapped. Having my jaw wired shut for a month doesn't sound like _that _much fun."

EDI fell silent for a while as Jeff sorted through image after image of various old nautical ships, humming under his breath. "Nah, none of these. Half of them have their eyes closed, and you, my girl, always have your eyes open."

"Have you ever read any of the science fiction works of Earth's twentieth century?" EDI asked after the tenth page of results was rejected. "Anne McCaffrey, perhaps?"

"Some, yeah. Got around a required literature course at the Academy by taking 'Visions of the Future: How Writers of Earth's Past Predicted Our Reality.' Professor was a real windbag, but some of the books were pretty good. I remember two of them, called _Ender's Game_ and _Speaker for the Dead_, sure as hell sounded like the author knew about the rachni before humans so much as colonized Mars." Joker's fingers flashed over the panels again, rejecting results. "Can you pull up, I don't know, real people, instead of all these statues?"

"I'm not certain that I wish to have you imagining me as some vid starlet." EDI's voice was almost . . . prim. "I asked, because I wondered if you had ever read _The Ship who Sang._"

Joker had no idea where she was going with this, but he made a mental note to look it up on the extranet. Or, just to make sure that EDI didn't know that he was looking it up, to ask Kasumi if she _happened_ to have a rare printed copy. "Can't say I have. Yes, let's just sort through like this. Eyes like these. Nose like that. . . we can assemble what you'd have looked like. And then, you'll have your _own_ face. Not someone else's." Joker glanced out the shutter again, and swore under his breath. "Shit. Is that Staff Commander Alenko heading up the pier?"

"It would seem so, Jeff. Should I alert Commander Shepard?"

"Yeah, page her. If her breakfast meeting with Garrus gets interrupted—especially by Alenko—she'll be cranky. And none of us want that," Joker added, with feeling.


	2. Shepherd and the Angel of Death

**Chapter 2: Shepard and the Angel of Death**

Lilitu Shepard rolled over in bed, eyeing the blinking comm panel with dislike. Every third blink, it emitted a slight humming sound—just enough to awaken someone who was still asleep. She had not, in fact, been sleeping.

Garrus, in no better mood to be interrupted than she was, threw a pillow at the comm panel to muffle its intermittent squawking, and went back to what he'd been doing—lightly biting her shoulder before pulling her body firmly back under his once more. "I thought you put a 'Do not disturb' sign on that damn thing."

"I . . . oh. . . I did. Beginning to think we might need to get a room . . . at one of the Citadel transit lodges . . . to get some peace while we wait on repairs." She nipped at the side of his throat herself, her small, blunt teeth making him groan softly. Her hands explored lower, and she smiled slightly, remembering how awkward they'd both been their first time, right before going through the Omega IV relay. Almost like virgins, but not quite, she'd thought at the time. Experience definitely made things better.

"So . . . if it's something _really_ important," he growled in her ear, "EDI will let us know. Anything less than a Reaper invasion fleet can wait."

The chiming of the comm panel grew louder and more insistent, but other things had grown slightly louder and more insistent as well. Her low, feral sounds of enjoyment drowned out the increasingly insistent chimes, until, right when Lilitu went quiet and limp, and Garrus growled in release, EDI's voice broke through the room, tones tinged faintly with reproach, "Commander Shepard, there is a representative of the Alliance Fleet who's come aboard to see you. Staff Commander Alenko, to be specific."

Garrus sighed, and rolled over, cowl and spurs catching on the sheets, leading to a flurry of kicking and rearranging on both their parts. "Of course it is. Are you _sure_ this cabin's been swept for surveillance equipment?" he asked, a bit mournfully. "People sure do have a habit of breaking in at the most inopportune moments."

"I had it checked three times," Shepard told him, sitting up in bed, feeling the sweet relaxation fade away, replaced by the singing tension that seemed to ride in her shoulders perpetually these days, leaving her taut as a strung bow. "And after I took a look at the video feeds that. . . our friend with all the eyes. . . has at her disposal," (Shepard never referred to Liara by name anymore, and did not mention the words _Shadow Broker_ at all, even in private) "I had the entire ship swept again. Tali found more Cerberus tech than even she knew what to do with, but I can't guarantee we caught it all."

Garrus' mandibles twitched into a semblance of a smile. "Ah, so _that's_ why you have this tendency to hang blankets over the aquariums. And here I thought it was because you were afraid the fish might judge."

Lilitu threw the remaining pillow on the bed at his head. He ducked, continuing to grin. "Come on," she said, tiredly, "Let's get dressed and face the music. I'm sure the Alliance must want _something_ important."

Garrus caught her wrist and pulled her back down to the bed. "Nah. If he's so all-fired impatient that he has to see you at . . . " Garrus checked the clock, and shook his head, "Oh six-thirty Zulu time, before you'd even go on-shift . . . let him wait." He snorted. "And let our friend with all the eyes have a show, while we're at it. It's not like we're doing anything wrong, or illegal."

She frowned slightly as Garrus lifted his pistol from the nightstand, and, making sure it was loaded and that the safety was in place, hostlered it and started to get dressed, pulling on padded underclothes and reaching for the greaves of his armor. "Do you really think that's necessary? It's Alenko, not a boarding party." She saw the emptiness come into his eyes. Sometimes he kept enough of himself in combat to joke, to treat it as a game or a challenge. But these were his sniper eyes, his Archangel eyes, his killing eyes. She loved those eyes in combat. They had saved her life more than once. She did not, however, like seeing them in her quarters.

Not the least because when Garrus' eyes went blank and empty, her body started getting ready for combat. She could feel the first flush of an adrenal reaction starting to creep up on her, and knew that her own face was becoming blank and set. She didn't know if her eyes were equally empty when it was time to kill . . . but when she went into battle mode, closing off all of herself except the part that found the next target, the next firing solution, the next optimal place of cover . . . how could they be anything else? Her hands itched for the grip of her own pistol, which was holstered and slung over the edge of the bed's headboard, but she flattened her hands on her robe, and refused to let herself reach for it.

The door chimed, once. She ignored it. "You really hate him, don't you?"

"I hate what he did to you," Garrus rasped. "I was standing _right there_ on Horizon, remember? Oh, don't get me wrong—I also hate the people who attacked Mindoir and left you without a family, and I'm also none too fond of the thresher maw that wiped out your squad on Akuze, or the Cerberus team that set you up for that attack. Alenko's just the most _accessible_ person in your past who's hurt you."

_And you'd love a chance to hurt him back_, she finished silently. "Don't worry about it." She smiled at him, sitting down on the bed and touching his scarred face. "I've got something better now," she said, simply. "Someone I know I can always trust. Someone who'll always be at my back or by my side. Someone who'll never leave me. Someone who won't . . . "

"Die on you?" One of his taloned hands caught hers, and both of their fingers clamped down hard. Her mind flashed to the intolerable moment when the gunship's rocket had thrown Garrus across the room, and the hail of bullets had punched into his armor as he crawled feebly to shelter. She might not be an expert on reading turian expressions and body language, but she was becoming an expert on _his_, and she could see anguish in his pale blue predator eyes, and knew without a doubt, that he was picturing her own death, her body sliding out of sight, out of the star Amada's light and into the darkness of the planet's shadow.

They were a matched pair now, in every way. Both pieced together with cybernetics, both scarred. Though she had opted to have the worst of hers repaired in the advanced medical module, they still showed up as a maze of fine lines whenever she blushed.

The door chimed again, twice. Impatiently.

She managed a smile for him, squeezing his hand, letting him know that she was here, alive. "I have felt, most of my life, as if the angel of death has been taunting me. You'd probably say the _spirit_ of death, I guess. _Mor'tae_? Is that how you say it?"

He nodded, looking a bit amused. She had asked EDI for a few lessons in Garrus' regional turian dialect, but only a few words were sticking here and there at the moment. At least it occupied the downtime while the _Normandy _was stuck in drydock, undergoing repairs. She took a deep breath, and continued, "Taking the people I love, while leaving me untouched. I got to a point where I tried very hard not to care about anyone around me, because if I did, they'd die."

"And yet," Garrus whispered, "For all of that, you had me lead the fire teams on the Collector base."

"You were the only one I could trust to keep everyone else alive. I knew you'd get everyone else out." Lilitu smiled at him, though her vision had started to waver a little around the edges. "You want to know how I knew?"

"Sure."

"Because the Angel of Death . . . is an Archangel. And when I call for him, he comes to me." She met his gaze steadily. "If I ever call for him by name, though, you'll know it's only for a damn good reason, right?"

He leaned forward then, touching his forehead to hers, a very turian embrace, stopping a millimeter from her lips, as he'd learned to do. For while his lips weren't designed for kissing, he was more than willing to allow her to bridge that gap.

The door chimed, again and again and again.

Shepard turned her head slightly, sighed, and said, "EDI? I assume that Commander Alenko is the person currently trying to wear out my door?"

"Yes, Commander," EDI responded, blinking into blue life in her usual cubby. "He would not wait in the briefing room as Operative Lawson requested of him."

"Of course he wouldn't," Garrus said, tiredly. "I'll escort him to the briefing room."

"You shouldn't have to." Shepard got to her feet, and glanced through her limited wardrobe. She grimaced at all the outfits on the rack that still had Cerberus markings on them, and decided that they would be less than diplomatic choices. She grabbed the brown, shoulder-baring shirt and trousers that she tended to think of as _colonial dirtfarmer casualwear_, and pulled them on.

Garrus began buckling his chest piece into place, making sure that he could move his arms smoothly, without any stray plates of armor catching him. "Well, Grunt isn't here to carry him there by the scruff of his neck, and Jacob and Miranda are both former Cerberus. Alenko won't respect them—" Garrus paused, tugging on a strap, and Shepard realized that his eyes were focused on her once more. "Have I mentioned how much I _like_ that particular outfit?"

"You have." She smiled, tilting her head to offer her neck. Turians, both male and female, tended to be territorial about their mates; biting was one method of marking that territory. This particular outfit allowed his marks to show. It was not one that she often wore around the rest of the crew, because in human terms, displaying marks of passion was inappropriate and discomfiting; however, she reckoned that Garrus would be calmer on a psychological level if his marks were visible. Certainly, he'd be less apt to throw Alenko down the elevator shaft.

Taking her invitation for what it was, he closed the gap between them, gave her a quick, hard nip on the neck, and headed for the door. Alenko would take it poorly, of course, if he saw it, of course, but since her other option was clothing with Cereberus markings emblazoned all over it, there was little she could wear that wouldn't offend his sensibilities in _some_ fashion or another. And there was a small, mean place in her that frankly enjoyed the thought of his discomfiture.

But, because she was, in the end, the ship's CO, she did pull on a jacket as the door closed behind Garrus. There was professionalism at stake, after all.


	3. Physiology and Psychology

**Chapter 3: Physiology and Psychology**

Garrus opened the door and stepped out into the hall, right into Alenko's personal space, and let the door slide shut behind him. He kept his face blank, an imperturbable mask. Shepard called it his cop-face in private, but then, she was one of the few humans he knew who could read turian expressions.

"About time," Alenko finally said, taking a step back to re-establish the bubble of personal space that humans found necessary for mental equilibrium. "Is she making a habit of personal meetings in her quarters at oh six hundred nowadays?"

Garrus didn't answer. He simply stepped forward again, back into that personal bubble, and watched the man twitch, having to crane his neck to look up at the taller turian. There's nothing quite so unbalancing to a human as having their personal space invaded. Particularly by someone much taller. The armor probably helped, too. And there was, as Shepard had told him many times, something small and furry that started to squeak at the brainstem level in humans after meeting an irritated turian's stare for too long. After letting the silence build for a moment, he said, mildly, "The briefing room is downstairs. Same location as the old _Normandy_. I'll show you there."

"I'm not going to be put off, even by you, Garrus. I'm here at the request of Councilor Anderson. As such, it's _human _business." Alenko seemed to realize he was being backed up at that moment, largely because his shoulders had hit the opposing wall.

"I'm not putting you off," Garrus told him, his voice still controlled and mild. He tapped the controls for the elevator. "What I _am_ doing, is escorting you to the briefing room, where you will meet with Commander Shepard at seven hundred hours, and not one minute before." He managed a tight smile, and if Alenko had been able to read turian facial expression, the biotic might have realized that it didn't touch his eyes.

Alenko stepped into the elevator, reluctantly, and the doors slid shut. Garrus could feel the tug of inertia in his abdomen as the lift began to drop deeper into the living areas of the ship. "I don't see what the damn holdup is," Alenko finally groused. "Obviously, she's up, if she's got a breakfast meeting with _you _penciled in." He allowed Garrus to show him to the briefing room, found a chair, and sat down in it. His posture wasn't as military-correct as it once had been, but there was still rigidity to it. Rigidity caused by anger? By an inflexible mind-set? It was hard to tell with humans, sometimes.

Garrus found a seat, just to the right of the head of the table, and started going through his datapad, moving from subtle intimidation to apparent obliviousness, keeping Alenko off-balance. He had a stack of repair reports to go through, anyway, all relating to the weapons systems aboard the _Normandy_, and he was interested to see what silence would do to the human. Every cop learned the value of silence. There were people of every species in the galaxy who simply _hated_ it, as nature itself abhors a vacuum.

Sure enough, Alenko was one of them. Less than three minutes had gone by, and he started in again. "I'm surprised that you of all people were willing to work with Cerberus, Garrus. They're terrorists, and you're a cop, for God's sake. A _turian_ cop, for that matter, dealing with human supremacists?"

"I told you on Horizon, Alenko, that you're so hung up on Cerberus, you can't see the bigger picture. Of course, you weren't really hearing much of anything but the sound of your own voice that day." Garrus didn't glance up from his datapad, content to let the acid of his words work into the human's mind. "In any case, we took out the Collector base without your assistance, saved tens of thousands of human lives, stopped the Collectors from taking any _more_ human colonies for their . . . project. . . and Shepard told the Illusive Man where he could shove his grand plan for human domination. _Cerberus _is no longer an issue." Now Garrus did glance up. "Of course, I don't expect you to believe me." He shrugged and added, his tone derisive, "I wouldn't have any reason to lie to you, but you've clearly already made up your mind about things. Haven't you?"

At that moment, the door to the briefing room opened, and Shepard strode in. Garrus glanced up, understood exactly why she'd chosen to pull on a jacket, but took a moment enjoy the brief glimpse of the circle of sharp tooth marks emblazoned on her left shoulder that he'd caught as she stood in the door. He then nodded at her briefly, the picture of discipline, before returning his eyes to his reports. "Engineer Donnelly reports that he's still having load-balancing issues with the main guns due to the repairs," he stated. "I'll head down there today and see if I can help by changing the firing sequences."

She took the seat at the head of the table, effectively to his side, and glanced at the report over his shoulder. "As cross-wired as everything is at the moment, I'm grateful that that's the worst problem we're seeing with the weapons." She glanced up now. "Alenko," she said calmly. "Nice of you to drop by. How can we assist you today?" _By addressing him second, she implies that his errand here is of less importance than her ship's repairs. And by addressing him not as __Kaidan__, but with just the cool reserve of the last name, she both suggests that she still outranks him, and excludes him in a subtle way, while still offering assistance. Nicely done._

Alenko had taken the time afforded him, and apparently, rather than think about what Garrus had told him, reacted on the emotional level, instead. "_This_ was your important breakfast meeting?" he finally demanded after a moment, staring at Shepard. "A representative from the Alliance military arrives to meet with you, and you blow me off to . . . to . . . _frolick_ with a turian?"

Garrus felt his mandibles twitch. The bites weren't _that_ noticeable under the jacket, which meant that the human had been _looking_ for them. Which, in turn, implied that he'd already heard rumors. Alenko couldn't have made it clearer that all of his issues with his former commanding officer were _personal_, not the philosophical ones he'd made such noise about before. This made the morning's interruption slightly more amusing, but still annoying. "Now, now," Garrus said, raising one hand. "There was certainly no _frolicking_. There were no daisy chains, or little baskets filled with food."

"That's picnicking, Garrus," Shepard replied.

"Frolicking and picnicking are mutually exclusive?" Garrus asked mildly.

"Not necessarily."

"So, no frolicking, no picnicking, but definitely some _cavorting_?" he offered, noting with detached amusement that Alenko was, sure enough, having difficulty knowing where to focus his eyes. He couldn't seem to look directly at either of them. Some form of psychological reaction, likely. Anger at Shepard, certainly, for whatever perceived betrayals. Disgust, probably. Humans had a harder time with their females mating with other species than with their males doing the same thing. It was partially cultural, and partly genetic; an imperative for their males to disseminate their genes as widely as possible, while keeping the females within the confines of the community, to bear the community's offspring. This was probably a large part of Alenko's confusion; his rational mind was in a fight with his instincts.

Garrus knew this all from his C-Sec training, which covered the weak points of all species in Council space, from the physical to the psychological. Garrus's mind flashed, briefly, to other human weak points, and smiled. During the hunt for Sidonis, he'd used one of them on Harkin, planting a knee in the corrupt former agent's groin. A human male would have winced in visceral sympathy, but Shepard's response had been a bland, "Ouch. That had to hurt," comment that hinted at a certain feminine amusement.

As they'd headed off to the meeting point to ambush Sidonis, Mordin Solus had chattered away in the silence of the transit car, "Human male physiology is certainly among the least efficient found in all the species of the galaxy."

Shepard had chuckled in reply. "I'm almost afraid to know what you'd find more efficient, Mordin."

"My own species certainly doesn't have such vulnerabilities. We have a cloaca. On Earth, birds, amphibians, reptiles—all are the same. All important excretory and reproductive functions contained in one single alimentary canal, and certainly _not_ placed in such a highly vulnerable position," Mordin had informed her.

Garrus had been tightly focused on the prospect of finally finding Sidonus and meting out some small measure of justice on his worthless hide, but the rather strangled sound echoing over the comm into his earpiece had surely come from Shepard's throat. He'd turned his head just far enough to see a corner of her face through the faceplate of her helmet.

"Birds . . . and lizards," she'd repeated, carefully, her tone trying for neutral interest and failing. "I suppose this is a common arrangement among our fellow sapient beings . . .?" Garrus had caught her sidelong glance at him, just before she'd looked back straight ahead at the flightpath of their transit car.

Mordin's response had been characteristically chipper. "Not as much as you'd think. Turian anatomy, for example, is somewhat closer to the human standard."

Garrus had found himself snorting, "Yeah, but we don't crumple over at a kick in the groin,"

"The phallus is stored inside the body cavity when not in use. Alimentary functions relegated to separate cloaca. Similar to Terran swans," Mordin had informed the commander brightly. "Elegant adaptation to Palaven's harsh radiation conditions. Life always finds a way. Inspiring, really."

And Garrus had had the most delightful surprise of seeing his human friend blush, through the scant opening in her helmet that revealed her face. _How changeable human skin is_, he'd thought, but had put the reaction aside . . . until long after the meeting with Sidonis had gone down. The meeting in which she'd probably saved his spirit.

So now, the former C-Sec agent simply watched Alenko's eyes flicker from left to right, trying to remember which direction humans tended to look when they were about to lie, whether to themselves or to others (_left_, his memory reminded him), and idly wondered if he'd ever be able to administer a nice, solid knee to Alenko's groin. Probably not, he decided, with some chagrin. It _probably _wouldn't go over well with the Alliance to assault their representative.

Eventually, Alenko mastered his irritation and his face. "You let him do the talking for you, now?" he said, addressing Shepard.

"When he makes sense. Right now, he does. You come aboard my ship before my watch even starts and pound on my door, demanding a personal meeting? You wouldn't do that to the captain of any other ship, so why the hell do you think you have the _right_ to act that way with me? You start the meeting with commentary about my personal life? You're damn sure not going to be taken seriously. Right now, you're wasting my time. State your business, or get off of my ship." Her tone was clipped, and her eyes were cold.

Surprisingly, it worked. Alenko's shoulders slumped a little. "I, ah . . . I apologize. Commander."

Garrus mentally shrugged. "With your permission, I'll head down to engineering for a bit. We can go over the rest of my reports at breakfast." He received a nod from her, stood, and left. His presence wasn't needed at this point; the worst of the incendiary rounds had been spent.


	4. The Looming Threat

**Chapter 4: The Looming Threat**

In the briefing room, Alenko began to speak. "I'm sorry. I know you don't want to talk about the personal. But I have to know. . . " his voice was a bit calmer than it had been, but he was still harping on the same tune. "How can you—damn it, the galaxy is about to _burn_, and you're screwing a damn turian. Do you know what Ashley would have said, if she were here?"

Shepard wanted to smack his head into the table. It probably wouldn't make any impression, she decided after a moment. "Yeah, I can. Because Williams was a sanctimonious bigot on her best day. She died a hero, and I'll never try to take that away from her. But to be honest, I couldn't _stand_ the woman. You ever notice that before Virmire, she got no ground time at all?"

"Neither did I," he said with quiet force, leaning forward.

No, back in the old days, she'd taken Wrex and Garrus on almost every mission with her, three born fighters, welded into a single unit of mutually earned respect. Oh, she'd certainly taken Liara and Tali into the field when she'd needed their more specialized talents, but neither Alenko nor Williams had set foot off the _Normandy _other than to visit the Citadel gift shops.

"I took a lot of heat from Alliance brass for depending 'too much on aliens,'" she replied. "Results clearly showed it was the right thing to do, though." At the time, she'd felt a little guilty about it; she was, after all, supposed to be developing her crew and giving them opportunities to show leadership and ability. Not allowing them any ground time had seemed potentially stunting to their growth. She looked at Alenko now, wondering if leaving him aboard to assist Pressly with the essential work of managing a crew of fifty people _had _stunted him.

_No_, she decided. _This is all recent. This is not something I'm going to own._

"Didn't you _trust_ us? Didn't you trust me?" he asked. The tone wasn't _quite_ plaintive, but there was a certain amount of hurt there, covered well.

"Wasn't a matter of trust, Alenko. It was a matter of finding the right people for the right jobs. You were better on the ship, dealing with personnel matters. Pressly made a fine, hard-nosed XO, but when he needed a softer touch with things, he made a point of telling me that you were ideal for the job. And that you were good with all the damn paperwork." She tipped her head to the side. "Looks like Anderson's noticed the same thing." She shrugged. "As to Williams . . . she was good with a rifle, but hell, Alenko. Remember Admiral Mikhailovich?"

He blinked at the apparent _non sequitur_. "How could I forget that snap inspection?"

"You seem to have forgotten quite a bit. The first thing he asked me was if I still remembered what color my blood was." Shepard's voice dropped several degrees in temperature. "Williams never put it in so many words, but she pushed the limits of what I'll accept from a subordinate several times." _Asking whether Garrus and Wrex should be allowed such 'free rein' on board. The snide implication that the "scuttlebutt" was that I'd know more about an asari's sex life than anyone else on board . . . hah. _"If she'd had the rank, she'd have said the same thing as Mikhailovich. I was damn close to putting a letter in her file that would have kept her from any further promotions, but then we'd have all gotten another five verses and a chorus about how the Alliance military was just keeping her down because of who her grandfather was." Shepard snorted. "I saw no real need to bring her and all her baggage onto every planet just for her gun. Would've been bad for unit cohesion, certainly." She laced her fingers together. "Are we done with old home week yet, Alenko? Or are you going to pop out the real question that's bothering you?"

He grimaced, and looked down. "Garrus?" he finally asked. "Were you always . . . ? I mean, even back then?" He looked uncomfortable even asking the question, and could not maintain eye contact.

She sighed, and her voice gentled, just a touch. "No. I liked him. I liked him a _lot_. But I didn't think that anything like that would ever be possible, so I put it out of my mind. Things changed." She gave him an appraising glance, and then offered, calmly, "If it's the concept of a human in bed with a turian that's bothering you, I'm honestly not even sure how human I _am_ anymore. There's quite a bit of me now that's cybernetic. If _that's_ not the problem, then try this: I love him. End of discussion."

"Why, in God's name? You know me, Shepard. You know that even after the way Vyrnnus treated all us biotic kids at Jump Zero, I'm not a xenophobe. But how can you?"

_Okay, you got to ask it once. Asking a second time, a different way? Not allowed. _Her tone chilled again. "Why? Because he has faith in me. Because he'd never betray me, and trusts that I'll never betray him. Beyond that, my feelings and his are none of your goddamned business. Now, are you actually here to speak on behalf of the Alliance, or are you just here to stick your nose in between my sheets?"

Alenko cleared his throat, and appeared to recover his mental balance after a couple of deep breaths. "Very well. Councilor Anderson sent me to pass along intelligence suggesting that several hundred _very large_ ships have been seen moving at the perimeter of Council space," he began, bluntly. "The rest of the Council has been publically dismissing this as hearsay and fear-mongering, but there are indications that the turians are pulling back their fleet to reinforce their borders. These ships—they've only been picked up on long range telemetry. Scout ships and cruisers and colony ships that happened to be in the vicinity—they've all vanished."

_Finally, after all the goddamned emotional bullshit, he gets to the point._ "They're Reapers? Or Collectors?" Shepard asked, leaning forward.

"Why would you think Collectors? Garrus told me that you'd just destroyed the Collector base." There was a challenge in his voice.

She shrugged. "I'm not dumb enough to think that that was their only base, or, even if it were, that every one of their ships was docked when we hit the base. My luck has never been _that_ good."

Alenko nodded reluctantly. "As to the Reapers . . . the Council denies even the possibility."

"Of course they do," she said, feeling the leaden weight of responsibility drop down on her shoulders. "And they'll keep doing it until their homeworlds are in flames."

Alenko hesitated. "Telemetry indicates that at least thirty of these ships are heading straight for Earth. The rest are heading for the homeworlds and major colonies of the rest of the Council races."

There were days when she simply felt so damned _tired._ How long could someone go on, shouting warnings that weren't heard, like Cassandra before the fall of Troy?

"Councilor Anderson didn't want to send the message over channels, because of the possibility that communications have been compromised, but he'd like to speak with you, in person, about what steps can be taken to protect Earth, and eliminate the Reaper threat."

"A few of my people and I will meet with him this morning. Set up an appointment time with him, if you would. Make it for oh-eight hundred, if you would." It was probably bad of her, but since Alenko was, effectively, Anderson's attaché, it amused her somewhat to treat him like a yeoman.

"Cerberus people?" Alenko bit off the words.

Shepard's glance met his steadily, and he looked away first. She stood, assuring him, "Believe me when I tell you this: there are people aboard this ship with more reason to hate Cerberus than you will _ever_ have. I invite you to go downstairs and talk with them. Have breakfast in the mess. I'll be down shortly."

Alenko's face went tight at this clear dismissal, but when she crossed to the briefing room door and stood, waiting, he had little choice but to stand as well, and leave. Then she sighed, replaying the whole meeting in her head, and focused on the real issue. The Reapers were coming.

She headed downstairs to engineering, where work crews were already busy. She ducked and wove her way through scaffolding and webs of loose cables to get to where Garrus stood at one of the panels, using a meter to trace, circuit by circuit, the power-up process for the main guns. "Garrus?"

He turned, and his eyes flicked down briefly. "Nice jacket," he commented, very quietly. The buzz of machinery and pneumatic equipment in the small engineering space kept his words from being heard more than a foot away.

"Thanks. I wanted to extend a middle finger to that _mentula_, but didn't actually want to disrupt the rest of the actual crew."

"Kind of figured that. So, what's the urgent news?"

She grimaced. "I'll brief everyone else at breakfast, but I wanted to give you a head start on the information," she said, and gave him a quick recap.

"Heh," he finally assessed, "Council in denial, Reapers on the move, fate of the galaxy in our hands. Status quo."

She found a storage container to perch on for the moment, and sat down, letting her feet dangle freely. "It's one thing to take out a Collector ship with the _Normandy_. But a Reaper . . . eight Alliance cruisers, Garrus. And _twenty_ turian ships. That's what it took to kill _one_ of them last time." Her lips clamped together in a thin line, and he put the meter down to touch her hand briefly; the most demonstrative either of them could be in public. "We can't afford to throw away that many lives, that many ships each time. And there's only one_ Normandy._ It's not going to be enough."

"We need a damn fleet." His voice was a growl.

"Fresh out, sorry."

He grunted. "Let me think about it a bit. I hate mercs, but they've got ships, and they're always willing to fight for cash. If we could get Zaeed back in charge of the Blue Suns, they might even be worthwhile."

"Without upgrading their ships, mercs would be little more than canon fodder. And I don't like the thought of upgrading people who're just going to turn around and use it on each other the instant the dust settles."

"Assuming there's anything _left_ after the dust settles."

"And I thought it was my day to be the cynic and your turn to be the optimist."

He snorted. "Eh, it was a thought. Didn't say it was a good one. I'll try to come up with a list of merc groups that at least aren't actively _criminal_, how's that?"

Still discussing options, they headed up to the messhall. Most of the crew was filtering through. People who'd taken the midwatch were now catching some dinner before heading to their racks, and people who were about to go on duty were gulping coffee (or a species-specific equivalent) and a quick bite to eat before heading back to their repairs stations.

Alenko sat at one table, chatting with Tali'Zorah, the only person present whom he knew from the old days, other than Garrus and Shepard. He seemed less defensive around her, but his body language still spoke of tension, and he eyed the rest of the crew warily. Shepard overheard one of Tali's remarks as she and Garrus passed by, ". . . Reegar's sent me a message once a week since then. I think he wants to make sure that I don't get too lonely out here among all the aliens. Especially since he seems to think I'd make a good Admiral. Keelah only knows why. I got most of his squad killed, following bad orders from the existing Admiralty board." Tali laughed a little then, an odd little gurgle of sound. "I think he'd make a better Admiral himself. But he's too self-effacing. I don't think he even knows how smart he is!"

Shepard's lips twitched. Tali mentioned Reegar at least once a day, but seemed to think that no one could see how she felt about her fellow quarian. Shepard looked around the messhall, and sighed. Their ranks were a bit depleted, of course. Kasumi had stuck around, mostly because Shepard had put her on retainer as head of security. Zaeed had left (with no tears shed on any side) once he'd collected his payment. Samarra had returned to asari space, with a promise to speak on their behalf to the ruling bodies who actually governed the asari worlds. Shepard had no real faith that this would do any good, but it did no harm to try. Thane had returned to the hanar homeworld with his son, preparing to die.

Jack, for whatever reason, had decided to stick around. She sidled into the messhall now, wary as a stray cat, picked up a tray and a few oddments of food, and, eyes still fixed on the newcomer, found a place to sit where she could keep an eye on Alenko. Miranda and Jacob entered last. Shepard could cheerfully have done without either of their company, but they'd proven their loyalty and their skills. She glanced around again, nudged Garrus, and muttered, "Is Grunt still on Tuchanka?"

"Yeah, Wrex said he should be back next week though. Apparently, the boy's spent the entire trip at the women's camp." Garrus's mandibles twitched into a faint grin. "When he gets here, he might not be able to walk."

She chuckled under her breath, and picked up a tray of her own. Settling down at a table next to Tali's, she gave her senior staff a quick briefing on the long-range telemetry results. As Miranda and Jacob turned to press Alenko with further questions, Shepard half-listened to their conversation. And she and Garrus began their morning ritual. "Right. Bacon. Is it on your list?"

Garrus opened a file on his datapad, and scanned down the list. "Mordin says it shouldn't cause allergic reactions, and it'll probably pass through the digestive tract without harm. Won't have any nutritional value of course, but then, I do _try_ to watch my figure." He eyed the crunchy brown strip that was subsequently dropped on his plate with mild suspicion. "Is it at least meat? Those . . . carrots. . . you gave me yesterday didn't really work out." He tapped a talon against his sharp, serrated front teeth. "These were designed for a predator species. We're only opportunistic omnivores, and definitely not herbivores, as you'll notice."

"It's genuine meat from a genuine animal," Shepard assured him, amused. "You could've used a molar on the carrots, though. Cracked it like a bone for the marrow."

"I wasn't feeling quite feeling _that_ primitive yesterday, but thanks for the early morning image." He now offered her something black and the size of an olive from his own plate. "Try this. Alai roe. Sort of a giant fish egg."

She grimaced, but went down her list. "Hmm. Might cause a mild reaction, but that's actually sort of what we're going for here."

Alenko broke off from his conversation with Miranda to look across the table in mild horror as they clacked forks together, as if proposing a toast. "We, who are about to _dine_, salute you," Garrus quipped, and they both chewed thoughtfully for a few moments before swallowing.

"What the _hell _. . . ?" Alenko started to ask.

Tali explained calmly, "It's actually an experiment that Doctor Solus and I devised. You see, quarian immune systems being what they are, we're the galaxy's foremost experts on allergic reactions. And one of the oldest methods for overcoming a body's immune reaction is to accustom the body, gradually, to higher and higher dosages of what it's allergic to."

"Kind of like old methods of gaining resistance to poisons, too," Shepard put in. "Mithridates, a king back in Roman times, was famous for dosing himself with every poison in the known world, so that his enemies couldn't sneak something into his food."

"How'd he die?" Garrus asked.

"Pissed off the Romans one too many times. They came in to conquer him and make his kingdom a province—sort of like turians make other worlds into client states. He tried to commit suicide by poison, figured out belatedly that _that _wasn't going to work, and then asked one of his bodyguards to kill him with a sword." She took another bite of the odd, black eggs.

Half the heads in the mess hall had turned towards her. Tali shook her head. "Human history is certainly . . . bizarre."

"Oh, I've got a million stories like that. Mom was a classics professor back on Earth, before we moved to Mindoir." She said nothing more. Family was a taboo topic for her, usually. _Before she and the rest of my family were killed by the batarians._

Tali cleared her throat. "Yes, well . . . the small doses of the toxins could be administered by regular injections, but I suggested to Dr. Solus that the same effect could be accomplished by dietary methods, and probably a lot more enjoyably. It's even relatively safe, so long as they keep epi-tabs on hand in case of a reaction." Her voice became wistful. "My suit is loaded up with a year's supply of different flavors of nutrient paste at the moment. It's all I've had since I entered the suit when I was twelve. I really wish I could taste what the two of you are eating. My father brought me alai roe back from a trip into turian space once when I was a child. It was such a treat."

"But why—" Alenko began to ask.

"Why," Shepard said firmly, "is not actually your business." She finished her serving of the large black roe, and crinkled her nose. "Okay, now to wait fifteen minutes before I try anything else. It's actually not bad. Not really fishy at all."

The conversation swung back now to the Reaper threat, but it spun in circles, speculation without information. She could tune it out, for the moment. Instead, she thought back to her first conversations with Mordin on the topic of compatibility. The initial, cringe-inducing one about physical intimacy with a turian and Mordin's caution not to 'ingest' any tissues or fluids due to the danger of anaphylactic shock. The subsequent ones—oh, how the good doctor had spluttered! "Obviously, moving beyond mere hormonal urges and stress relief into more stable bond-mate relationship has ramifications," he'd told her. "You are aware, that dextro-amino acids and levo-amino acids _cannot_ combine to produce offspring?"

"Not without some pretty serious technology," she'd acknowledged. "If that kind of tech exists, the Collectors might have had it."

He'd spluttered then. "Hybrid offspring usually mules in nature, sterile, outcasts among both populations. Ethical ramifications enormous!"

She'd held up her hand to still him. "Mordin, Garrus and I aren't even that far along in our conversations. I'm thinking long-term. He might not be. But say, what if we adopted kids? Assuming there's a future in which we could adopt them, that is? Wouldn't both parents being able to eat at least _some_ of each others' foods be a good thing for the kids?"

Mordin had nodded, hesitantly. "But while we're on the topic. . ." Shepard had looked down at her hands then, studying them. They looked so real, and yet, they were so much stronger now than they'd ever been before. "I don't actually know how much of my own body is original equipment. Dr. Chakwas won't tell me." She met his enormous amphibian eyes, watching him blink upwards thoughtfully. "I don't even know what reproductive organs I actually have_ left_, Mordin. Hell, even if I still have ovaries, the eggs inside them could be damaged due to radiation from space exposure. My suit might've protected me, but I could've taken a _lot_ of rems. Not to mention being flash-frozen in the shadow of Alchera's dark side probably didn't do me any favors."

"Freezing probably preserved tissues. Lucky. Otherwise, Lazarus Project much more difficult," he told her calmly.

Thinking about what had happened to her while she had been, not to put too fine a point on it, _dead_, never failed to make her uncomfortable. Shepard had squeezed her fingers into fists to stop fiddling with them. "Could you at least run some baseline scans and tell me how much of me is, well . . . _me_, at this point?"

"Could ask Miranda. Head of Lazarus Project?" The salarian blinked at her again, nictitating membranes sliding over his huge eyes.

"I could," she acknowledged quietly. "But I trust your answers more, Mordin."

Mordin had asked some clinical questions then, starting with the standard "Date of last menstrual cycle?" and then the scans had begun. The good news was that all the plumbing was intact. Her ova matched her genetic markers exactly, and, miraculously, didn't show signs of degeneration to the DNA due to radiation exposure. Knowing exactly how much of her had been had been reconstructed, however, occasionally kept her awake at nights, however, wondering what would happen when the batteries ran out. . . .

Alenko's voice startled her back to the present. "We've got to get going if we're going to make it to the embassy on time." He shook his head. "How can you sit here, eating breakfast so calmly, is really beyond me."

Jack muttered, not exactly under her breath, "Hey, who the _fuck_ is this guy with the big mouth, anyway?"

"Alenko," Garrus said, ignoring the by-play, "absolutely nothing will change in the next twenty minutes, and it's better to take the chance to eat while we can."

Shepard nodded. "Aside from which . . . I refuse to have my entire life dictated by the Reapers. If all I am is a toy soldier, made to wind up and fight, if I'm solely defined by that struggle . . . that's not living." She turned her gaze back to Garrus, and it was as if she'd clicked off a switch. "So, I think we said we were going to try to go out to eat before we left the Citadel, right?"

"Last I heard, Guido's makes pretty good pizza. Dextro and levo."

"Watching a turian try to eat pizza qualifies as both dinner _and _a show. Sounds like a plan to me." She grinned to take the sting out of her words, and touched a button on the mess hall table, asking EDI to go ahead and make the day's announcements.

"Certainly, Commander. Today's focus is on team-building exercises. From 10:00 until 12:00, all personnel with at least small-arms ratings will report to the armory for marksmanship evaluations and to be checked out on new weapons," EDI's blue eyeball winked at the people in the mess hall, as her soft voice echoed all over the ship. "At 13:00, biotic personnel will report to the gym for advanced training. This will last until 15:00."

Shepard interjected, "I'll be there in my capacity as referee, assuming our Council business doesn't run long today, EDI. If I'm not back on board to bounce people on their heads as needed, scratch the biotics training till tomorrow."

Alenko leaned over to whisper to Tali, "Since when is she a biotic?" His confusion was legitimate, Shepard had to acknowledge. She'd never had the abilities before waking up in the Lazarus Research Station.

"Ceberus gave her a few modifications. The ability is limited, but powerful." The quarian made a shushing gesture.

EDI continued, "From 15:00 until 17:00, all personnel not actively engaged in repairs will report to the gymnasium for advanced hand-to-hand training, led by Commander Shepard and Officer Vakarian. This training is intended to redress the recent issues with repelling boarding parties."

"The boarding parties were _Collectors_," Jacob muttered.

"Doesn't hurt to be more prepared," Miranda reminded him.

"True enough," Shepard agreed. "And while what I can teach—Okinawan karate, a little jujitsu, and whatever else I've picked up along the way—and what Garrus can teach from the various turian fighting modes—might not _work_ on someone who doesn't _bend_ the same way we do, at least the principles should be sound. Best we can do."

With that, she cleaned up her tray, and got ready to see Councilor Anderson. "Miranda, you have the conn while we're gone."

Miranda cleared her throat. "If I may, Commander . . . ?" She moved to their table, lowering her voice as she spoke.

Shepard nodded, wondering what the woman was going to bring up. Miranda looked uncomfortable. "Don't do anything for the Alliance for free," she finally advised, quietly. "In cutting ties with the Illusive Man and Cerberus, we lost our financial backing. And if you haven't noticed, freelance hero work does not exactly pay well."

Beside her, Garrus guffawed. "_I'd _certainly noticed that a vigilante's salary doesn't stretch very far," he agreed.

Miranda nodded to him, and continued, "Between the cost of repairs to the _Normandy_, feeding the crew, and keeping the lights turned on, we're going to be hard-pressed to give anyone aboard more than a token paycheck this month, Commander. While we take care of every physical need for them, and they're all committed to the mission . . . if we can't help them pay their bills or support their families, we _will_ start losing people."

Shepard frowned. "Can we sell some of the resources we've been collecting? The hold's getting a little full."

Miranda sighed. "It'd be a start, but that'll only go so far."

Shepard rubbed a hand across the back of her neck, thinking. "I don't have any other ideas, really, Miranda. Technically, I should have two years' back pay due from the Alliance. They haven't been really forthcoming with it, though." She suddenly grinned. "Maybe I should apply to them to collect my own survivor's benefits?"

Miranda shook her head, unamused. "I'm just saying, don't just _give_ anything away. Particularly to people who consider you a traitor." Her glance across the mess hall at Alenko was measuring.

"I'll take it under advisement, Miranda. Thank you." Shepard turned to the quarian next. "Tali, could you meet me and Legion in the AI core in a bit, before you go aboard the Citadel with Garrus and me?" Ideas were starting to percolate in Shepard's head . . . ideas on where to find a fleet (or two, or three), but she didn't want to jump the gun before she _knew_ that the ideas would work.


	5. The Price of Peace

**Chapter 5: The Price of Peace**

"Shepard-Commander," Legion addressed her formally as she stepped into the AI core, Tali and Garrus at her side. "Officer Vakarian. And Creator Tali'Zorah. How may this unit be of assistance?"

"The Old Machines are coming," Shepard told him, finding a server bank to lean against. The hum of the equipment in this room was oddly soothing, she found. "Alliance long-range telemetry suggests that possibly hundreds of Reaper ships are inbound, heading towards Council space."

His eyeflaps wiggled for a moment. "Yes," he answered. "We have received similar information, when the ship's AI permitted us to access FTL channels earlier this morning."

"It seems to me that we need fleets to deal with the Old Machines in space, before they can use mass effect drivers against planetary populations. Likewise, once they do come in to land, we need ground troops." Shepard was feeling her way along here, unsure how to approach the questions she _really_ wanted to ask.

"These are logical conclusions, Shepard-Commander."

She sighed, and went for a frontal attack. "I need the quarian fleet. Hell, I need the geth fleet. Right at the moment, I can't have both at the same time. We need to fix that, and we need to fix it now."

Tali's head whipped towards Shepard in shock. "Fix it? How?" The quarian's voice scaled upwards slightly.

"It may take something of an end-run around the Council, an agreement already in place between your two races, but here's the thing: geth don't really need what quarians and humans and everyone else would consider _habitable_ planets, correct?" She glanced at Legion. "In fact, what you need are planets with an abundance of metals. What the atmosphere is like, even what the temperature is like, is pretty much irrelevant, correct?"

Legion nodded briefly in assent, the flaps on his head moving inquisitively. "Okay, what I am going to propose for you two to think about is this: The geth allow the Flotilla to land its civilian population on the former quarian homeworld and make room for them. That allows the Flotilla to go to full military operational status without having to worry about the civilians. In exchange, peace is declared. Over the next twenty to forty years, the geth would be ceded, by the Council, one or more planets in Council space that are uninhabitable by organic lifeforms, but that have resources that the geth can use. They should also, I think, be given an embassy on the Citadel, and should, in turn. . . " _What is the phrase Legion always uses . . . _"_Integrate_ to the galactic community."

Legion and Tali both stared at her. The geth appeared to be in system lockdown for a moment, and Tali wasn't in much better condition. "This would not," Shepard added, "mean that the geth would have to compromise the future that they would be building for themselves. Their way of life would be their own, on whatever worlds they controlled, the same as any other Council race." She grinned, "And hell, between the quarians' love of arguing, and the slow method by which the geth 'achieve consensus,' in forty years or so, you can all decide for yourselves who owes reparations to whom."

Legion inquired, politely, "Reparations? As in the exchanges between turians and humans made to amend the repercussions from the Relay 314 Incident?"

"Oh, _reparations_. So _that's_ what we're calling it now," Garrus muttered under his breath.

Shepard restrained herself from kicking him in the shin.

Tali finally responded, slowly, hesitantly. "It's so simple, it might even work. I know that Admiral Zaal'Koris would be in favor of peace. Admiral Shala'Raan—my aunt Raan—would probably agree to anything that brought us back to the homeworld. But Admiral Xen. . . she wants to control the geth. And Admiral Han'Gerrel just wants to destroy them all."

"We'd either need a tie-breaker vote, or to convince Xen or Gerrel to go along with this." Shepard sighed. "Assuming, of course, that the geth and the Council agree to this idea as well."

"The idea has merit, Shepard-Commander. I will communicate with my brethren."

"Then as soon as possible, I will need you and Tali to head to the Flotilla and convince them of the merit of the notion." She paused, and added, "And if you can steal him, Tali, get Reegar to come back here with you and join the Normandy crew. I can always use another person who can handle a heavy weapon."

She never could see much behind Tali's faceplace, besides the pale shape of the quarian's eyes, but there did seem to be a happy gleam there at Shepard's words. "In the meantime, I'll try to get human backing for the geth to receive an embassy. Councilor Anderson has met you, Legion. He knows you and your people are sapient, and not a threat. It's the rest of humanity he'll have to convince."

Exiting the AI node, Garrus asked her, cynically, "Got any ideas on how to do that? Especially, say, Udina?"

Shepard shrugged. "I can point out that the geth would be a huge new, untapped market for materials, technology, and goods. If that doesn't convince him, I could add that if humans don't champion them, I can walk next door to the turian embassy and ask _them_ to take on the geth as another client race."

"Oooh," Garrus remarked thoughtfully. "I love it when you fight dirty."

"Should I leave you two alone?" Tali asked archly.

"Unfortunately, no." Shepard replied with a mock sigh. "Duty calls."

But before leaving the ship, she had EDI place a long-range communication. "Aim for where these mysterious ships that 'look like ancient rachni vessels' have been reported," she instructed the AI.

"What's the message, Commander?" EDI inquired.

_Hmm. How did that asari on Illium put it . . . ?_ "Message begins. 'Those who soured the songs of your mothers have returned. Be prepared. The fight begins soon.' Sign it Shepard and send it in the clear."

_Rachni?_ Garrus mouthed the word without speaking it aloud. Fortunately, she'd gotten pretty good at reading turian lips. Her response was a single, tightly controlled nod. No reason to let anyone who hadn't been on the original team on Noveria know what this was all about. Even from where she was standing near the galaxy map, she could see Joker turn his head to stare back at her, his eyes wide and nervous.

"That sort of message will . . . worry people," Garrus muttered.

"The ones who think I'm some sort of paranoid maniac with a gun?"

"No, the ones who think you're a paranoid maniac with _lots_ of guns." That was Tali, off to her left. Shepard regarded the turian and the quarian happily. They, and Joker, of course, were all that remained of her original team. Oh, Wrex was alive, and doing good work on Tuchanka, but he wasn't _here_, to fight beside her and make her laugh. Liara was off, immersed in her new role as the Shadow Broker. Alenko was . . . well, a stranger now. But these two were here . . . and they were family, or as good as.

Shepard grinned at them now. "Let 'em worry. Maybe it'll get them in a receptive frame of mind. Get in your armor, folks. It always impresses the locals."

**Meeting, Shepard**

The meeting with Anderson, as usual, was a mixed bag. He took the notion of a geth embassy on the Citadel in stride, his eyes widening slightly. "I'll turn it over to Udina. He needs more irritation in his life. It's like fiber, but for the mind," he joked, but the wheels at least were turning. Slowly, as in all things to do with the Council, but once begun, the process _would_ continue.

It turned out that the Alliance and the Turian Hierarchy were "conducting joint training exercises" and while the official turian Council member still bleated that the Reapers were all a sham, other government officials, particularly those with access to long-range telemetry readings, were sounding the alarms. Preparations for an entire squadron of _Normandy_-class ships had been set down two years ago; now, the brass wanted to ensure that they were outfitted in line with the Ceberus modifications.

During a break in the meetings, as she stood on the balcony, looking out over the Presidium gardens, Garrus muttered softly in her ear, "The asari are not going to like this. For twelve hundred years, the Turian Hierarchy has been the attack dog of Council space. Adding human military might to the turian forces . . . it could shift the balance of power away from the asari, who've dominated the Council simply because they were _first_."

**Shepard grimaced. "The politics makes my head hurt. But I can't think this is a ****_bad_**** thing."**

"Not necessarily, no. I personally _like_ the idea that our two races can play nice with each other." He gave her hand a squeeze. "But there are those who will find this threatening."

"The batarians." Her grin was quick and wolfish. "I can think of worse things than making a bunch of slavers sleep uneasily at night."

"Not just them. The volus are more than a little jealous of humanity's quick ascent—and you did it all without being a client race of the turians. Going from enemy to ally so quickly, without being conquered or a client in between . . . it will chafe."

"Well, that's what the diplomatic corps is for. Holding hands, mending fences. . . ."

When the meeting resumed, they moved across to the turian embassy, where techs were on hand to take Garrus' report on the Thanix cannons. Shepard was pretty sure she saw _glee_ in the eyes of the turian engineers at the combat footage taken from the Normandy's front cameras showing the Collector ship exploding after the second shot from the upgraded weapons. "I hesitate to mention this, because it's technically illegal in Council space," she added, "but one of the modifications Cerberus made to the original _Normandy_ was the addition of a highly advanced AI system, partially based on technology taken from Sovereign."

The turians, predictably, did not like this information. Not only was it illegal, she was informed, several times, but it was also highly unwise. "That unshackled AI saved the lives of every person on board, several times over," she finally told them. "The kinetic shields and the ablative armor on the hull were also helpful, but while Joker's the best pilot I've ever seen, EDI is what tipped the balance in terms of the maneuvering needed to deal with the Collectors. Teeth and a hard shell only get you so far. Think about it, at least."

"Going to be expensive," Anderson muttered, working it out on his omnitool. "Goddamn. Taxpayers are _not_ gonna like this. Hell, most of the rest of the _fleet_ won't like having their appropriations redirected."

"Admiral Mikhailovich once estimated that the Tantalus core of the old _Normandy_ could have been used to make 12,000 fighters. But 12,000 fighters won't take out a Collector ship. Or a Reaper—I'm sorry, a _Sovereign-class ship_, if that's what I have to call them for the purposes of this meeting." Shepard's voice was dry. "Not without miniaturizing the Thanix cannons even further, and I suspect any number of engineers in the room are about to tell me why that's not possible."

She was right. There were technical limitations to the technology that required a ship at least the size of a frigate to pull off, all largely relating to the size of the mass effect core. The new _Normandy_, with its larger size and drive core, was obviously more powerful than the ships being built to the old spec at the Palavan shipyards, but they at least had the necessary power output.

The details went over her head, but Tali was nodding in agreement, and she knew she could get the quarian to simplify the explanations for her later. In the end, they all told her that the best a fighter could do would be to have miniaturized versions of the Javelin disruptor torpedoes that the _Normandy_ still equipped on the secondary batteries.

Of course, it irritated her that the turian ambassador took their gun footage at face value, but refused to believe the data, taken directly from Tali's omnitool, of the human-form Reaper under construction, and the long firefight that had ensued. "How can you accept one, but not the other?" she snapped at last.

One of the turian techs coughed. "I've seen this vid before," he mentioned, tactfully. "It was forwarded from the Salarian Special Tasks Group, with an addendum from their team leader noting that the information is simply too detailed to be fake. There's _terabytes _of data here. It would take three years to create this as a fake, at least." He winced as the Councilor stared him down. "Sorry . . . didn't mean to speak out of turn, sir."

The turian Councilor sighed. "For what it's worth, I actually believe you, Shepard," he finally admitted. "But the official position of my government is something else entirely. If there's a way to assist you, I'll do it, but . . . "

She sighed. "Yeah, I know. Is there anything else we need to attend to? I've got ship repairs and a crew to see to."

That's when Anderson broke it to her. "We need you to take an Alliance representative to the shipyards at Palaven, to oversee the modifications that will need to be made to the _Normandy _class ships."

"Keep in mind, we've still got a week to go on our repairs," she warned Anderson. "Ceramic polyresin only cures so fast."

"Shouldn't be a problem," the Councilor assured her. "The techs at the shipyard can start on the cannons before you arrive, since it's turian technology, originally, but the shields and the armor, and how your engineers have compensated for the loads? They need to see it in working order."

"So, who's the rep?" she asked, and watched as Anderson's eyes flicked across the meeting room towards Kaidan Alenko.

_Well, shit. This day just keeps getting better and better. . . . _


	6. Training Day

**Chapter 6: Training Day**

On returning to the ship, Garrus watched in amusement as Shepard laid down the law to Alenko. This was _not_ an Alliance ship, she informed him. Everyone on board was part of a team. He thus had a choice: he could either participate as part of the team, or he could be confined to his cabin as a "visiting dignitary."

Given the choices, Alenko opted for "participation." So it was that they all found themselves on the firing range. Some people were, of course, rustier with their weapons than others. While Garrus sometimes enjoyed listening to music and the competitive aspect of working with a squad in a firefight, there were times when the best of Expel 10 blasting into his earpiece and adrenal surges simply got in the way of the job.

He adjusted the sights on his rifle minutely, and laid it atop its stand, sighting along its length. He inhaled, exhaled partway, and then held his breath. He began to apply pressure to the trigger carefully, timing it between the beats of his heart . . . feeling the world go blank and cold around him. There was no emotion here; there couldn't be. His heart rate could not change. There was just the target, and the feel of the trigger under his finger . . . . _click._

_BAM._

He sighted again, every motion fluid now, firing, in the rhythm now, in the empty place where he and death had such a comfortable working relationship. He fired again, and again, and again, reloaded, and then repeated the exercise, this time holding the rifle without the stand to prop it on, simulating real combat.

_Click. BAM. Click. BAM. Click. BAM. Click. BAM. Click. BAM. Click. BAM. Click. BAM._

Someone had given him a damned short clip, he realized only when the next _click_ was not followed by an accompanying _BAM. _

"Goddamn, Garrus," Jacob half-complained, half-joked. "Ten targets, all doubletaps to the head, in under a minute. How're we mere humans supposed to compete with that?"

Garrus shrugged. "At this range, it's not really much of a challenge, Jacob. A kilometer and a half out, in high wind? That, my friend, is _art_."

Jacob shook his head, but apparently knew better than to think that Garrus hadn't done exactly what he'd spoken of. "Where? Omega?"

"Citadel, actually. Length of the Presidium. A ventilation duct malfunctioned, setting up a high wind, and a robber had just made a fatal miscalculation, taking a hostage from the Emporium. Used her as a shield as he was trying to make his way across the footbridge over the lake." Garrus methodically broke apart his rifle as he spoke, preparing to clean it. "He'd been camped out in the Emporium long enough for us all to get in position, but I was the only one with the clear shot. I took it." He gave Shepard a sidelong look. "So, you might say I have a long history of shooting people who take hostages."

She grinned a little at his sly reference to their first meeting. "I still say you were taking chances in that med clinic."

"Have I missed yet?"

"Hey, you've shot _me._"

"_That_ was on_ purpose_. You weren't moving fast enough, and I didn't want to tip the mercs off that you weren't one of them."

"The fact that I was I shooting them with an _assault rifle_ was probably their first clue, Garrus."

Their eyes met, and they shared a laugh before Garrus yielded his spot to Shepard. She put on her ear protectors and set up. Usually, her helmet shielded her delicate human eardrums, but in the firing range, she wasn't in full gear.

She wasn't his equal with the sniper rifle, although she'd come to appreciate its power for destroying armored targets, from YMIR mechs to Collector scions. He watched her, and knew that she was simply thinking too much about the process. It was mechanical still, not ingrained. But she relaxed once she got her Revenant assault rifle back in her hands, rattling off quick bursts at the targets to retain the weapon's accuracy, always dead on for center mass.

Alenko was, in fact, out of practice. He qualified on the pistol, but just barely. Garrus met Jacob's eyes, and the darker-skinned human nodded. "You'll need to report back here tomorrow for practice, Alenko," he told the commander in his cheerful fashion. "Need to knock the rust off. Even if this is just a cake and coffee run to Palaven, you may as well take the time to practice."

Once each person had finished, and received their evaluations—Shepard placed as expert on five weapons; Garrus ranked as sharpshooter on his—the commander gave Jacob a few other low-voiced directions. "It's often said that generals always wind up fighting the last war. I'm probably falling prey to the same tendency, but I want every single member of the crew who hasn't come through here yet, to qualify with at least small arms, and I want side-arms issued to everyone aboard when we next leave port."

Jacob nodded grimly. "How about putting a weapons locker on every deck?" he offered. "Small arms won't do much against Collectors."

She thought about it. "Let's stick with pistols. The last thing we need is for someone who hasn't qualified on it to be using an assault rifle and drilling holes through the bulkheads. I've breathed vacuum before, Jacob. It wasn't so much fun that I want to go for another round."

"Aye, ma'am." Jacob snapped his heels together. Shepard had finally broken him of the bad habit of saluting indoors, especially since he never wore a cap of any sort. Garrus turned his head away to smile, remember how often she'd groused about that particular tendency.

After lunch, the biotic session was set up. Garrus usually didn't watch, but today was an exception. Jack snickered a little as he entered the gym and settled in on a bench. "Shouldn't you be in engineering?"

"I gave Donnelly a couple of new firing sequences to try. He said he needs to run simulations and get back to me. So, here I am."

"You want popcorn?"

"I think it'd stick in my teeth."

"I got the dirt from Joker. So, this Kaidan's apparently the kind of one-night stand that goes horribly wrong? I could get into that, if he weren't just such a . . ." Jack waved one tattooed hand, "Pompous little bitch."

Garrus tried not to laugh. It was a strange, strange day when he and Jack agreed on _anything_. "I think Shepard would prefer it if you and Miranda didn't actually _kill _him on the practice floor. Not out of any emotional attachment, but due to political ramifications, you understand," he said, mildly.

Jack cracked her knuckles. "No killing, check. How about maiming?"

Garrus grinned. "Nick him all you want. Nick him all over the place."

Jack actually winked at him. "Don't worry. I got this covered. I think Princess may think he's cute, though."

'Princess' was, of course, Miranda. Who, if she did think so, did not go any easier on Alenko than Jack did, herself. Shepard popped in five minutes into the session, and plopped down on the bench next to Garrus, watching intently as the two women double-teamed Kaidan. He put up a barrier, and Miranda warped it. He ducked for cover, and Jack pulled him right back out again. He tried to throw Jack, and Miranda slammed him up into the ceiling and back down onto the deck, where he lay for a moment, clearly winded.

Jacob walked in at that moment, looked down at the man sprawled on the floor, and chuckled. "Glad I wasn't the crash test dummy today," he told Alenko genially, leaning down to give the man a hand up. "Probably my turn next, though."

"Assuredly," Miranda told him, her cold smile of confidence having a slightly friendlier edge than it did for anyone other than Jacob.

"As lovely as it is to see you two ladies working so well together," Shepard called across to Miranda and Jack, "I'd like to see Alenko and Jack work against Miranda and Jacob next, please."

And on it went, each pair being shuffled into new configurations every ten minutes or so to keep people alert and open their eyes to different synergies. Alenko had kept up on his biotics, and once the others learned to work with his support-oriented skills, they were quick to lean on him. "Nice to see," Shepard muttered to Garrus. "Figured two years of paperwork would've dulled him."

"Marksmanship is low. Biotics is adequate. We'll see about the hand-to-hand. As is, I wouldn't put him on a ground team at the moment."

"Doubt we'll need to. This is supposed to be a cake and coffee run." She gave him a rueful smile. "I'm mostly including him in these exercises to let everyone get their hazing out early, and so he can find his equilibrium a little faster."

"If he feels like he's part of the team, and not an outsider, he'll probably act a little more amenable?" Garrus asked. "You've got more faith in the team-building process than I do."

Shepard had to break away at that point to direct a slam at Jack, as the tattooed woman overzealously attacked a downed Miranda with a shockwave. "Okay, that's enough," Shepard told them all. "You all did well. Hand-to-hand is in thirty minutes. Take a break, relax, and get ready."

"Are you considering my suggestion, Shepard?" Miranda asked.

"What, make it a competition?" Shepard frowned. "That can get a little unhealthy, don't you think?"

"But it would be good for morale and _esprit d'corps_."

Garrus watched her weigh the options briefly, and then shrug. "Sure, why not. I'm sure Joker's already got a book set up on it for bets anyway."

Joker's voice crackled over the comm, "I do not!" There was a brief pause, and Garrus just caught the edge of a muttered word that sounded suspiciously like "yet," to his sharp ears.

"Full contact?" the turian asked, as if out of idle curiosity. "I think turian military protocol is starting to rub off on you, Shepard."

With a glance to ensure that Miranda and the others were out of earshot, Shepard met his eyes for a moment, amusement sparkling in her own. "That wouldn't be the only thing."

The comm crackled again as Joker coughed. "Er, the comm's still on, Commander," he said, a little apologetically.

Garrus mused again on the mutability of human skin as Shephed flushed, tiny white lines showing up against the red-the last remnants of her surgical scars. "Damnit, Joker," she said after a moment. "You're going to pretend you didn't hear that."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Tali was excused from the combat training, due to the danger of a suit tear, and since Jack tended to use her biotics to enhance her strength in combat, no one really wanted to spar with her. Mordin had pled too much work in the lab, so there were only a handful of senior staff available to help train the rest of the crew. Training is where they started; fifty minutes of groups conducting drills all over the gymnasium. It was crowded.

After the initial training, elimination rounds began. Jacob was, as always, a tough and canny opponent, but after a couple of minutes, Garrus got him in a submission hold which, as he demonstrated to the onlookers, could become a neck-break with a small shift in leverage. Shepard took down Miranda after three minutes herself, in a match that tended to be both furious and fast, neither opponent relying on main strength—although Garrus knew that Shepard now had strength to spare, thanks to her cybernetics. _She's letting people learn. Beating people up doesn't teach them much of anything._

Eventually, Shepard got one of Miranda's arms behind the woman's back, and held it there, with one hand. "This is one of the best weak points on a human body," Shepard commented, gesturing for everyone to gather around and take a look. "Almost every other species in the galaxy, whether they're turians or quarians or volus or vorcha, shares the same three-fingered configuration. Their fingers are larger and much stronger than ours, but the human grip tends to be more flexible. But in the end, it's hard to do to them what I'm doing to Miranda right now." Shepard's fingers were doing something subtle and difficult to see, which seemed to involve bending the knuckles of Miranda's hand into unpleasant configurations. "From here, it would be fairly easy to break one of the fingers, and once you've got a hold on a broken finger, you'll find that most humans become _very_ cooperative." She grinned at them all briefly. "But, that's neither here nor there, since, hopefully, we won't be fighting any humans in the near future."

Midway through sparring, the doors to the gym opened, and two massive figures shambled into the room. "Grunt? And _Wrex_?" Shepard and Garrus hastened to the door to greet them. Garrus and Wrex gave each other a brief handclasp—a gesture of earned respect between the two. They'd verbally poked and prodded one another across a dozen alien worlds, and Garrus had to admit that Wrex had changed the way he viewed krogan. In Wrex, he saw the potential of the otherwise savage species. And he'd learned from the krogan battlemaster, too.

"Shepard!" Wrex bellowed. "Got something here for you." He jerked a massive paw, and Garrus heard a low growl from behind the krogan, out in the hall. He tensed. He knew that sound all too well.

With only that as a warning, a varren leaped through the doorway and bounded over to Shepard. It lifted up, planted its forepaws on her shoulders, bringing its face—and its powerful jaws—level with her own. Garrus moved forward instinctively, but then recognized the creature's distinctive coloration. "Isn't that the one you made friends with on Tuchanka?" he asked, ready to move in and pull the varren off her if it so much as twitched.

It didn't look as if it would be necessary, though. The varren's spiked crest was elevated, giving it an almost frisky look, and its scaly tail was swishing furiously back and forth, whacking Wrex in the legplates. "Urz, right?" Shepard said, carefully putting a hand to the side of the animal's face, near the sensitive ear holes. Garrus could see the whites showing all the way around her blue irises, the only visible sign of surprise or fear she was currently allowing herself.

"Yep," Wrex told her. "You fed him. Varren only take to one master at a time, and for him, that's you. He hasn't been eating right since you left. So, he's your responsibility, Shepard."

She was busy keeping eye contact with the varren, to ensure that it wouldn't sense weakness; otherwise, Garrus _knew_ she'd have thrown the krogan a dirty look. "It's supposed to be the other way around, Wrex. _I'm_ supposed to say 'He just followed me home, Dad. Can I keep him?'"

Wrex guffawed. "Down, boy," the human woman ordered the varren, pointing at the ground, and surprisingly, Urz obeyed, crouching at her heels and making a sound somewhere between a growl and a purr. She looked small and fragile outside of her armor, especially in proximity to such a dangerous beast, but Garrus knew that if the varren really had imprinted on her, that she was safe. Relatively speaking, anyway.

Shepard sighed. "Well, I always _did_ want a dog growing up."

Jack called from one of the side benches, "You thinking about turning into a pirate queen, Shepard? Having that puppy at your side will make your reputation."

Kasumi shook her head. "Nah. She'd need a parrot on her shoulder to qualify."

"How about a pyjak?" Grunt offered, in a rare display of humor.

Shepard pointed at him. "You. On the mats with everyone else for hand-to-hand practice. You get to be our Collector stand-in." She settled Urz at her feet, and began overseeing the proceedings once more.

While she was distracted, Garrus met Wrex's red-tinged eyes. "You're early," he muttered. "Didn't expect you for a week."

"Heard some pretty disturbing rumors from out near the Rim," the krogan rumbled back, his heavy voice, as always, slow and measured, weighing his words as he spoke them. "Figured you all would be up and moving pretty damn fast and pretty damn soon."

Garrus nodded grimly. "That's a fair assessment. Still have a week on repairs, though. It's taken two months to get this far after the beating the Collectors gave us last time."

In the background, he could hear Shepard giving the standard risk assessment, "You all know the drill-when encountering a krogan in combat, do _NOT _engage in melee! Get back, behind cover, and _shoot_. Throw a grenade. Do whatever it takes, but do _not_ get in melee range. That being said, there may come a point in time at which you will not be able to retreat any further, you may run out of ammunition, or other circumstances may be in effect that require you to fight hand-to-hand. In matters of size, weight, and danger, a krogan makes a _great_ stand-in for a Collector. Well, minus a couple of spare arms, but, we'll use our imaginations."

There was a brief pause. "Do I have any volunteers willing to give it a try?"

Wrex rumbled, "Is that Alenko back there?" looking over Garrus' shoulder into the room.

"Yeah. Let me guess, did everyone else just take one smart pace back, and leave him alone to volunteer?"

"Nah. Think he's trying to _fit in_ by _voluntarily_ volunteering." Wrex grinned, his lips pulling back from massive, yellowing teeth.

"My day just keeps getting better and better."

Wrex laughed, a huge bellow of sound, and slapped Garrus on the shoulder. "You're improving with age, turian. You're getting _mean_."

Garrus heard the first _thump_, and risked a glance back over his shoulder. "Yeah, well, I'd _prefer_ to be nasty in this case, but I think I'd better step in."

"Nah, let him take a couple more falls."

_Thump_.

"I don't know, Wrex, the human head isn't really designed for repeated impacts like that."

"Half the people in this room are human. If he were going to break the first cranial shell, I think they'd be acting more concerned."

"Wrex . . . humans only have one cranial shell."

_Thump._

"Well, shit, then, boy, get in there before someone gets dead."

"Always a pleasure talking with you, Wrex." Garrus sighed, and turned back towards the mats, where Grunt smacked one fist into its opposing palm with glee, looking down at the human male sprawled before him.

"So," Shepard said brightly to the gym as a whole, "Any ideas on what Alenko's first mistake was?"

"He went in alone?" That was Gabby, one of the engineering crew, sounding a little frightened at the thought.

"He didn't use a bomb," Garrus corrected, trading a few hand gestures with Shepard as the two of them began to circle Grunt, as the hulking krogan began to laugh.

It was _tough_ taking out Grunt. The young krogan regenerated faster than a spirits-be-damned vorcha, meaning that stunning blows didn't distract him for long. Garrus and Shepard attacked as a single unit, using tactics Shepard compared to a wolf-pack in the debrief afterwards. "When I was growing up on Mindoir, my dad used to take us out into the field, where they were releasing the Terran animals into the local ecosystem. We'd cull the deer herds if needed, and count how many wolves were available for predation. I watched them hunt, running down their prey. So, one person in front, at the prey's throat, keeping its attention," she explained, as EDI obligingly replayed the match on the room's screen.

Onscreen, Garrus took exactly that tactic, ducking and dodging Grunt's heavy punches and simply trying not to be where those massive hands might happen to be grabbing next, twisting out of the grips when they connected, and using light strikes to Grunt's face to cloud his vision and irritate him, turning the famed krogan blood-rage against him.

"And then, the second, or even third person, comes in from beside or behind," she continued, as her own form entered the screen. "There aren't many weak points on a krogan, but everyone's joints bend in _some_ direction. In this case, I encouraged them to go where they were, thank god, weakest. That was, in fact, a _guess_ on my part." She admitted that to Grunt to give the boy his due, as, on the screen, she swept his legs out from under him.

Garrus couldn't help but note that she wasn't putting any weight on the foot she'd used for the sweep at the moment.

From there, as Grunt staggered back to his feet, Garrus had moved behind and Shepard to the front. "You'll see here that most nerve strikes don't work on krogan," she pointed out. "They have redundant nervous systems, so when you hit one cluster, the paralysis is only temporary until the secondary system kicks in."

"Likewise," Garrus commented dryly, "there is no such thing as a submission hold on a krogan. Where the carotid arteries are on a human, drell, turian, or asari, the krogan have arteries, too . . . but they have a secondary vascular system that's actually embedded in the spinal cord. It kicks in just before unconsciousness. The hump also gets in the way of conventional rear attacks. In terms of similarity to the larger varieties of Collectors, the analogy is fairly complete. We have no way of knowing how redundant their anatomy is, but given that some seem to consist of several bodies that have been melded together, trying to get in from behind and choke them seems . . . pretty futile."

"So, once we got Grunt to _this _point," Shepard nodded to the screen, where she had Grunt in a semblance of a choke, although her feet were, in fact, dangling off the floor, "that's why Garrus raked the eyes."

Wrex rumbled from the back, "Not a bad move, turian. Gouged-out eyes take _forever_ to regenerate, and they really do hurt like a son of a bitch. And while smell and hearing will still let us track enemies, losing sight is still a pain in the ass."

Grunt added, "Collectors have multiple sets of eyes. If you're going to use that as a tactic on them, make sure you get them _all_. Don't bother threatening. Just do it. They will not submit any more than a krogan will."

Shepard tugged at the hem of her workout shirt, and began, "So, folks, it's 17:00, so that's a wrap—"

"No, no, no, Commander," Joker called over the comm. "You and Garrus are the last two standing. This was a _competition_, after all."

The voices of the crew muttered in anticipation. Shepard sighed. "Joker, I'm going to confiscate _any_ profits you make off that betting book and put it in the ship's rainy day fund."

Laughter rang through the audience. She glanced at Garrus, and limped—a little theatrically, to be sure—to the middle of the mat. "One round?"

"Sure." _As if I didn't notice that the foot you're favoring suddenly shifted from right to left. _"But I'd prefer it if you put Urz in another room. I don't think he's going to like watching his mommy get thrown on the ground." He grinned, letting her see that the bravado was in good humor.

This wasn't the first time they'd sparred. It probably wasn't even the fiftieth. As they circled, the primitive, predatory part of his brain, the part that linked fighting to food and to mating rights, awakened. It didn't generally do so in firefights, but in melee combat, it was always a possibility. With potential male rivals for his mate's affection nearby, parts of his brain—the most primitive parts, closest to the brainstem—were awake and shouting that display was needed. Garrus _knew_ better, of course, but he couldn't help it that his fringe rose a bit, flushing with blood and color, flaring into a crest, couldn't help that his focus narrowed.

She was wary of his long reach—he was over a foot taller than she was, after all—but had long since learned to use speed to engage a larger opponent. Not content to circle for long, waiting for him to attack her, she closed the gap, ducking under his arm, trying to get behind him, one hip slamming into his, one leg sliding through his to try to destabilize his far knee with a planted foot. He allowed his knees to bend a little, absorbing the strike, and turning into her, caught her lifted knee and used it to pull her off-balance.

She recovered, spinning her leg out of his grasp, and then they were back at it again, concentrating intently, blocking, dodging, trying to get a hold, turning away, nothing with real force yet. Just a dance at first, of smoothly moving limbs, right up until the first counter to the counter to the counter that missed . . .

Garrus winced as Shepard's body hit the mat, but he was already following her to the floor, going for a submission hold. They hadn't practiced groundwork in two years, and she was _much _stronger now than she had been back in the day, and still moved as lithely as an eel. She planted her feet solidly against his abdomen at first, trying to lift him off, using the powerful thigh muscles that humans had. He twisted and knocked one of her legs to the side, managed to pin one hand, and got his forearm across her throat. . . when it suddenly occurred to him that now she had her legs wrapped around him in what in human fighting parlance was "the guard". . . a position that was optimal for mating as well. His teeth bared for a moment, and their eyes met and locked.

She knew _exactly_ what was going on inside of him, and he watched her turn her slightly ease the constriction over the windpipe, baring her own teeth momentarily, as if ready to bite his forearm. "Good match," she said, and tapped the mat with her free hand, letting her body relax, go pliant. Surrendering.

Gingerly, Garrus got up, and pulled her to her feet, trying very hard not to think about dragging her off to their quarters. The turian equivalent of adrenaline was extremely close, chemically, to its various testosterone andoxytocin brethren in the brain. Which simply meant that for a turian, the mating and fighting triggers were a little more closely aligned than in a human.

_Deep breaths_, he reminded himself. _Human ship, human crew. They will probably not understand this. Nice, deep, even breaths._ A variety of hands smacked down on his shoulders, and he had to fight the instinctive reflexes, the desire to turn again and fight. His teeth bared again, and he concentrated hard on gripping Shepard's arm tightly. He could clearly hear Wrex and Grunt laughing somewhere in the room. _Well, they can probably smell the pheromones._

"Damnit, Garrus. I actually had Shepard down to take it all," Joker complained cheerily over the comm system.

Garrus cleared his throat, trying to jumpstart rational thought. "She could've gotten out of it if she'd really wanted to," he told the pilot. As Joker squawked something indignant about "throwing the match," Garrus realized that what he'd said was true. He hadn't locked the choke yet; she really _could_ have gotten out of it. _She didn't want to?_

Shepard cleared her throat. "Right, everyone, dismissed. Go catch your showers and your dinner, before Mess Sergeant Gardner's soufflé falls. We can't have a pouting chef aboard." She was moving at a determined hobble for the elevator, and since Garrus' hand gripped her wrist, he found himself moving along with her. Softly now, she muttered, "Just get to the damn elevator and get upstairs as fast as you can, Vakarian. I don't think either of us really wants to put on a show down here, but if you don't get _moving_. . . ."

_Huh. Maybe the fighting/mating triggers are closer together in humans than I thought._

In the distance, Wrex burst out in a fresh rumble of laughter as Garrus picked up the pace for the elevator. He was _not_ going to run. Walk in a purposeful manner, yes. Run, no.


	7. A Modest Proposal

**Chapter 7: A Modest Proposal**

It had taken them some time to work off the adrenal surge. Shepard lay curled on her side, her head resting on the most comfortable part of Garrus' shoulder, letting her fingers trail along his skin, while he absently stroked her arm in return. Her eyes were half-closed, and she smiled. "I can't help but think of all the time we wasted _not_ doing this earlier."

"What, sparring?" His voice rasped along her skin, as intimate as any caress, but his eyes stayed closed.

"I was thinking more of the tie-breakers."

He chuckled sleepily. "The Mako would've been a little too crowded back in the day. Plus, half the planets we landed on seemed to have toxic atmospheres or temperatures in the minus something-unpleasant-centigrade. Would've been uncomfortable. And sneaking into your quarters on the old _Normandy _would've been less than optimal."

She laughed under her breath, remembering it all so vividly. The way the Mako would bounce and jar across the uneven terrain as Garrus drove, slamming everyone on board into each other bodily. "I used to be black and blue after every mission."

"Your hide's soft," he told her, running a finger along her forearm in illustration. "But, yeah, I think my kidneys shook loose a couple of times. I'm just as glad that beast isn't aboard anymore. The suspension definitely lacked something."

Her mind drifted again. Hopping out of the Mako, Garrus and Wrex behind her, getting ready to attack a geth enclave. Opening fire, her armor grating on Garrus' as they crowded into the shelter of the same piece of twisted metal on the ground, Wrex covering them with his shotgun from behind a low wall to the left. The snow whipping wildly to create a whiteout, the geth jamming disrupting their radios, and the wind howling so loudly that they had to bang their helmets together to speak by sound conduction. It could have been a dozen different worlds. _Antibaar? Noveria?_

Slowly, reluctantly, she sat up to test her weight on her ankle. And then muttered a bad word in a dead language. Urz, who'd followed them upstairs and had plopped down beside the bed to doze, lifted his scaly muzzle, sniffed at her absently, and put his head back down again.

"You've never explained why you swear in Latin."

"Not just Latin. Greek, too. Dead languages. Like I said this morning, my mom was a classics professor before my dad moved the whole family to Mindoir. Romans, Greeks. You'd probably enjoy the Romans. They were kind of like turians. Lots of gods and goddesses, imported from the peoples they conquered, but mostly spirits. Household gods, _genius loci_. An empire that just kept expanding since they figured out that the most efficient way to avoid being invaded was to govern their neighbors. Duty, honor, loyalty. Oh, and a military doctrine that makes the term _scorched earth_ seem a little pale and undescriptive."

"You always change the subject when family comes up." His voice was quiet, and he still hadn't opened his eyes.

She sat back down. He deserved better than reflexive self-defense. "Sorry, Garrus. It hurt for so long thinking about them, that it's . . . habit, really, not talking about them. So, yeah. Mom didn't like to hear cussing, so I learned how to swear in dead languages. Made her laugh when I'd call someone a _mentula_, anyway." She snorted a little. "She was such a . . . scholar. Hell, even my _name_ is from a dead language, a dead civilization. Lilitu . . . some Babylonian goddess. Picked up later as 'Lillith' in later Judaic sources as the mate of the first male in creation. She left ol' Adam for an—" Shepard stopped, and chuckled softly. "Left him for an archangel." _Well, what do you know. I never thought about it like that before. _

Garrus opened one eye. "Which one?"

"Samael. The, ah. . . . angel of death."

Both eyes opened now. "Interesting. Any possibility that prescience runs in the family? Any element zero exposure?"

She threatened him with a pillow as he continued, sounding sleepy, "I'm going to have to read up on your culture and all these archangels. They're certainly a more interesting bunch than they sounded when people on Omega decided to tag me with that nickname."

"Well, it'd keep you busy while I'm working through turian verb conjugations or, you know, real work." She bent down and gave him a kiss on the cheek, then pressed her forehead to his. "With the ankle feeling like it is, guess I'm going to ask for a raincheck on dinner tonight," she added quietly. He nodded, not answering, and closed his eyes again.

She limped to the shower cube, cleaned up, and studied the swelling ankle. It didn't feel broken, which meant that after a night with it elevated with some ice, it should be fine in the morning. Looking around for something to wrap it with, she noticed, with some surprise, that there was a blue ribbon peeking out of her desk drawer. _I didn't even know this desk __**had**__ a drawer. What the hell?_

Sitting down, still wrapped in a towel, she tugged on the ribbon hesitantly. It seemed to be attached to something in the drawer. Just as carefully, she edged the drawer open. "Is it a bad sign that I'm wondering if this is a bomb?" she called to Garrus.

_That_ got his attention. He surged upright in bed, eyes opening wide. "What? Where?" He dragged half the sheets with him, just about taking out the small coffee table in the tiny living area as he did so, then stopped short as he saw what she was looking at. "Oh, that." His tone was sheepish, and then turned teasing. "Well, finally. I thought I was going to have to set up some neon lights on that for you to notice. For a Spectre, sometimes your observational skills are less than acute."

Since there was no one else around to see, she stuck her tongue out at him. "So, this isn't going to explode if I open the drawer?"

"Probably not. I mean, I can only speak for what _I_ put in there. . . ." He hunkered down next to her, putting his head on level with hers as she sat there.

Shepard edged the drawer open further. Tied together with the blue ribbon were two packages. "Presents? It's no where near my birthday, but thank you!" She studied them. "Is there an order I should open them in?"

One taloned finger tapped the larger of the two first. She found the adhesive, slid her nails under it, breaking it loose, and found that inside were two ceramic pots, and what looked to be a sort of slim paintbrush. She weighed them in her hands, feeling a bemused smile curve up the corners of her mouth. She glanced at him sidelong, and found those predatory eyes fixed on hers, intent, waiting. "These look like the paints you use every morning. White and blue."

"Ah . . . yeah. That's because they are." He cleared his throat a little; his voice was raspy with what sounded like anxiety, nerves. Fear. "I had a hell of a time finding a mixture that was both traditional and that wouldn't make you break out in hives."

She was used to listening to the sardonic humor, used as shield against potential disappointment. "Does . . . does this mean . . . that you'd like to paint my face?" Her voice had gone a little tight, scaling a little upwards in pitch. "In your clan and colony markings?"

"Yeah." His mandibles flared in an uncertain smile. "Very much so."

"I was wondering if you were going to wait till we were on Palaven to ask. Well, hoped you'd ask, anyway." She reached out blindly, and found her hand caught in his.

"I was hoping to get the ceremony done here on the Citadel."

"Your family would never forgive you if you showed up _already married_. Think of the party they'll miss." 

"Think of the fighting and arguing and carrying on that _we'll _miss." His tone was as dry as craters of Metgos. "Open the other one."

She'd been so delighted by the first, that she'd forgotten the second. It contained a simple platinum ring, its stone tension-set, so that her hands could slide into armor or envirosuit gloves with ease. The gem itself was a nightfire—a variety of black diamond native to one of Palaven's moons. "I have _no_ idea if it's the right size," Garrus commented, evidently nervous. "Human fingers are so damn small, I just took a guess and the jeweler said he could resize it." He took the ring out of the box, and waved it in the general direction of her hands. "Okay, which one is it supposed to go on?"

The ring didn't quite fit, being a little large, but that was fixable. She knew she was grinning like a damn fool, through happy tears. He touched the moisture on her face warily. "That's usually not a _good_ sign."

"This time, it is." Her voice was muffled as she buried her face in a relatively safe portion of his shoulder. "We can at least get the human half done here on Citadel. Anderson can give me away. I can ask Tali to be my bridesmaid. You can get Wrex to be your best man . . . wait. Is that why he showed up here with Grunt?"

Garrus grinned. "Took you a while to ask that one. You're slow today, Shepard. But yeah. He even said he'd be willing to go to Palaven, so long as he gets to spit in the general direction of the Imperial court while he's there. Told him there was no real need, and that he needed to mind the shop back on Tuchanka."

"I've been _busy_ today. And I still have more things to do." She touched the scarred side of his face gently, making sure to take the sting out of her tone. "Seriously, though, your family will be _pissed_ if we don't let them participate. Especially in light of your mom."

He sighed. "I really wish our friend with all the eyes hadn't shown you that dossier on me."

"Hey, I asked your permission before I read it. You're the only person aboard who got that courtesy, I might add." She paused. "I remember you telling me once that your father would hate me, just because I'm a Spectre, and because he doesn't think anyone should be above the law. I actually agree with him on that point, you know."

Garrus grimaced, a twitch of the mandibles. "Yeah, well. Our track record since then isn't very convincing. Cerberus? Kasumi, Zaeed? Blowing the hell out of _Purgatory _to get Jack out? Thane, a confirmed assassin? Hell, even Samarra, an asari justicar, doesn't get us any points. She's as much outside the law as inside the law, half the time."

"When you put it that way, it sounds like a losing battle, but . . . listen, I'm not going to lecture. You know why I don't talk about my family. I lost them, my entire _colony_ when I was sixteen. Then I lost my entire adoptive family, the Marine squad I was stationed with, on Akuze. That gives me a little . . . perspective, all right?" Her voice was very tight as she spoke, and it was hard to force the words out past the constriction in her throat. "When my family died, for the first month, all I could think about was how much I wanted to . . . just . . . _talk_ to them again. Just hear their voices. All the times I could have talked to them before, but didn't, because I was so busy being, well, adolescent."

She managed a smile for him. "You'll regret it if you don't at least try to talk to them at least once more. If they screw it up, they screw it up. Then it'll be their fault, and I'll never ask you to make the effort again."

He sighed. "I'll talk to my father, sure. We're going there anyway. But I still want all the legalities taken care of before we go." He picked up the brush and touched its dry bristles to her nose, stroking from there under her eye, down her cheekbone, cutting out wide, and then arcing back in again down to the corner of her jaw. Practicing, trying to find the best way to replicate the markings on her smooth, alien features. "While we're at it, you better get cracking on your Tal'mae archaic dialect. It's a three-hour ceremony, and I wouldn't want you agreeing to something you weren't _one hundred percent_ aware of."

_Shit. _She gave way with as much good grace as she could. "Well, at least if we do it here on the Citadel, if I mess up the formal and the informal forms, fewer people will notice it. Is there a reason I can't just do my half in English?" She gave him a rueful grin. "It's not that I'm lazy, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to butcher it."

"I'd still prefer it being done in Tal'mae." His eyes held something she couldn't quite read. "Using the old language and the old rites isn't just traditional, but also makes it the most formal and binding form," He gave her a hesitant smile. "As in, no divorce is permitted . . . if you're okay with that."

She waved it aside. "Not a problem."

He looked relieved, and then added, more playfully, "And you're right. If we do it here, no one except me and the minister will notice if you say _khltacus _instead of _xhlctus_, or something like that."

Shepard squinted. "Bird eggs and . . . um . . . _xl . . . hlc . . ._"

"_Xhlctus._ The act of agreeing to perpetuate the lineage of a clan."

Her mouth snapped shut, and she looked down at herself for a moment. "That could be problematic if it's binding in a legal sense. Your parents can't, well, sue me for breach of contract if I don't produce offspring, right?"

Garrus hesitated. "In any other form other than the Tal'mae, yes. Well, not _sue_, so much. In any other variant, they could forcibly dissolve the union. In this form, they can . . . disapprove loudly."

"Garrus, that is _not_ what I would call reassuring!"

"It really wasn't meant to be," he answered, and ducked into the shower cubicle, ending the discussion. But he was amused, damn him. His mandibles were twitching, and his eyes glittered with high good humor. "Oh, something else to consider," he called from the shower. "Marrying a citizen of the Turian Hierarchy doesn't necessarily confer full citizenship on the mate, but it _does_ convey a certain level of rights and responsibilities. That's one of the reasons the ceremony takes three hours."

_Shit, shit, shit. _"EDI, I'm going to need a very good dictionary and a translation program set up on my terminal in the next fifteen minutes . . . ."


	8. Preparations

**Chapter 8: Preparations**

**Shepard**

The next several days went in a flurry of activity. Shepard sent for Miranda, Jack, and Jacob, and between the three of them, opted to send Jack to the Ascension Project out in the Skyllian Verge. "Make sure there's no Cerberus involvement left from the Pragia project," she told Jack. "Try to hold down on the fatalities . . . and if you can teach the kids there something, it'd be useful. We're going to need a lot of trained biotics pretty quickly, I suspect. Ones that can hold their own against Collectors, seeker swarms, and hell, even fight off indoctrination."

"Dunno if I can really teach anyone much of anything," Jack had commented, shifting uncomfortably. "The only way I ever learned anything was through pain. I don't know how to . . . how to teach what I am, what I do."

"Time to learn a few new tricks, is all." Shepard had rubbed at her temples. "Look, I know it's not an ideal fit, but think about it this way. If I send Miranda there, what are those kids going to learn from her? Or how about if I send Jacob?"

Jack snorted. "Shit. Way to put the whammy on me, Shepard. If you send either of those two there, the kids are going to learn to be _dead_." She had a confused, frightened look in her eyes, which she quickly masked with bravado. "Hell, they might die quicker with me there. I could look at a room of kids and just . . . snap."

"I know. Being responsible for other people is scary. Get over it, Jack," Shepard told her firmly. "I trusted your instinct for survival in the Collector base, Jack. I trusted it over the centuries of training and power of an asari justicar. You know why?"

"'Cause I'm a powerful bitch."

"Not just that." Shepard leaned forward. "You've got something no asari martriach will ever have, Jack. The potential to be more than you are right now."

The tattooed woman regarded her warily. "This sounds like shrink psycho bullshit."

"It's not. I look at you, and I look at Samarra. In Samarra, I see ten thousand years of the same damn thing, over and over again, without variation. I see a will built of wrought-iron, cold and strong and indomitable, but once it breaks, it's broken. Toss it back in the forge and start over again the exact same way."

Jack laughed at the description. "Yeah, I can see that. She's a powerful bitch, too. In her own way."

"But when I look at you, Jack, I see something different. I don't see wrought-iron. I see a tree."

"You see a _what?_"

"A tree grows, Jack. Sure, if the growing conditions are bad, it might start off all bent over to the side, but given the right opportunities, it grows straight and strong and it _bends_. Give Samarra another thousand years of life, and she'll never change. She'll always be exactly who she is right now. You? You've already changed. You spared Aresh. You left Pragia in the past, where it belongs. Tell me that isn't strength. Tell me that isn't _potential_." Shepard paused. "You'll do fine with the Ascension kids. Anderson's concerned that the kids coming out of this program are just not trained to survive. You're an expert in survival, Jack. They _need_ you."

_And maybe you need them, too . . . . _ But she was smart enough to leave the words unsaid. Anderson was pulling a _lot_ of strings to get Jack to the Ascension Project without arrest warrants being issued for her mere presence.

Jacob, she sent to track down a handful of mercenary organizations that Garrus had pointed out had the best records . . . certainly the ones that had the least involvement in drugs, smuggling, and slaving. If they had to have every ship they could get, she might as well arm the people she thought she could tolerate doing business with.

Miranda, she sent back to Earth to sniff out where Cerberus and the Illusive Man had gone to ground. It was dangerous work, but the woman was ideally suited for the job. Her cold competence and network of connections, as well as her insider information on the organization, all made her the perfect spy for the task. Miranda wasn't thrilled with the notion of going where her father still had influence, but she understood the necessity.

Alenko had watched the flurry of meetings and departures with what looked like detached interest. Finally, he commented when he caught her in the mess hall, mere hours after Miranda's shuttle departed, "I'm surprised you didn't shake up the command structure immediately after your, ah, _departure_ from Cerberus."

She shrugged. It was hard not to take the question as some sort of information probe on behalf of the Alliance. He was, however nominally, back to being on the team, so he deserved some sort of answer. "There was no real need to redraw the org charts just for the sake of it. Miranda did a decent job as XO. She handled all the day-to-day bullshit very well, administered the budget, and kept a tight lid on the Cerberus crewmembers. Plus, I rarely took her off the ship on missions. An XO needs to be aboard when the captain's not." Shepard shrugged. "If I'd removed her as XO the instant we blew up the Collector base, it would've been a slap in her face, and in the crew's face, too. No need for that. Besides, who would I replace her with?"

Alenko stared at her. She couldn't imagine why; everything she'd said made perfect sense, as far as she could tell. But his tone was mild, and she could see that he was trying at least for diplomacy with his next question. "I'd have thought you'd want Garrus as your second in command."

Shepard started filling her tray with Gardner's culinary experiments of the day. _Crepes suzette? Seriously? _"Eh, that would've come off as nepotism. Plus, between the fact that when onboard, he usually handles the forward guns, and the fact that he goes on every ground mission, that hasn't left the man _time_ to deal with disciplinary matters or to check the decimal places in the quartermaster's reports." She gave Alenko a look. "You _know_ this, Kaidan. You know what an XO _does._ They're _supposed_ to be the most hated person on the ship. You're military, not a civilian. Only a civilian would assume it's possible or even preferable just to re-organize a command structure at the drop of a hat. Why ask the question? Are you evaluating my mental state?"

He shrugged. "Trying to figure out how much of you is still you. So, what's the plan now that Miranda and Jacob won't be aboard for a while?"

She settled in at a table, and began to eat. Gardner's cooking was spoiling her. MREs were never going to look the same again. "Now that Miranda's not here? Garrus moves up. He'll have to _make_ the time for the administrative crap, but I know he'll be good at it. Kasumi or Grunt will wind up at the forward batteries. And I'll set up an Officer of the Day rotation to cover the bridge when we're not aboard." Shepard took a sip of her coffee, and started going through a stack of files that needed her approval or her signature. Because while battles come and go, military paperwork never ends.

**Shepard: Mess Hall**

Of all her travelling companions, Tali was one of the few not headed out just yet. She wanted to stay with them until the engineers at the shipyards at Palaven had gotten a grip on all the changes she'd made to the _Normandy_'s engines, so she and Legion would head out for the Flotilla and geth space afterwards. And both she and Kasumi seemed to be even more excited about the whole dual wedding ceremony than Shepard herself was. The women braced her one day at lunch in the mess hall, and were enthusiastic about holding the festivities on the Citadel. "I think it's very romantic," Tali assured Shepard. "Have you thought about what you're going to wear?"

_What? Huh? _Shepard looked up from the datapad and the masses of red tape she still had to cut through to get the _Normandy _cleared to leave the drydock area, including testing and certifications for a dozen different systems. She blinked a couple of times to give her mind time to realign itself with a totally different reality, and replied, "Well, I still have that black thing Kasumi gave me to infiltrate Donovan Hock's . . . . "

"Absolutely _not_," Kasumi told her, feigning horror. "It's cocktail length, for starters, and second, it's black. Bad luck in turian culture. Most human cultures, too."

"Why do I have a sinking feeling I know where this conversation is going?" Shepard asked, sitting back with a sigh.

Tali wheedled, "Shepard, when I pick a mate, the best I can hope for is to change the overwrappings on my environmental suit. If you let us help you shop for something, I can at least pretend . . . ."

Shepard gave her a direct look, trying to burn through the faceplate protecting the quarian's eyes with her glare. "There's nothing that says you couldn't have a dress sterilized and meet Reegar in a clean room somewhere," she replied, hoping that the comment would send Tali into enough of a tailspin that the conversation would end there.

Tali paused. "It would probably take a week of linking our suits and some antibiotics, but . . . "

_Mission accomplished. Topic de-railed._

It would have worked, except that Kasumi jumped into the conversation again. "You're going to be the focus of quite a few vid cameras, you know. You're a very public personage, if you haven't noticed. First human Spectre, back from the dead, hero of the Citadel, not to mention the only survivor of Mindoir _and_ of Akuze. There _are_ a few reporters on this station, and taking out the marriage licenses at the human and turian embassies is a matter of public record."

Shepard very carefully put the datapad down and put her face in her hands for a moment or two. "So, what you're saying is. . . ."

Kasumi finished the thought with cheerful ruthlessness, "That your wedding pictures are probably going to be disseminated as far as the Perseus Veil by the time the honeymoon begins? Shep, you really hadn't thought of this yourself?"

"I try not to think about the press much. They interviewed me a few times after the attack on Mindoir. Then once a year on the anniversary, the requests would come in. I turned them all down." _Then all the requests for interviews after Akuze. Turned them all down then, too, other than the ones from the Marine newsfeeds. All the damn cameras and lights, the hungry look in their eyes, the __**stupid**__, witless questions_, _the agendas . . . ._

Kasumi drummed her fingertips on the table. "You _have_ to look good. And it's not like you can even tell us that _an Alliance dress uniform would be perfectly appropriate_," and here, Kasumi's voice became a mocking imitation of Shepard's own, "since you're not entitled to wear the uniform anymore."

Yeoman Kelly turned around from a nearby table. "The smartest thing to do," she suggested brightly, "if you want to limit press exposure, that is, would be to give exclusive coverage of the event to a reporter or two that you can stand, Commander. I can set that up, no problem. Just give me a name from the human press to work with, and I can do some research on the turian press, too."

"Let us help _you_ for a change," Tali implored.

Shepard quietly banged her forehead against the cold plastic of the mess hall table and said several very bad words in dead languages that her mother had taught her. "All right," she finally said, surrendering. "So much for keeping this quiet and low-key."

"Let me put it this way . . . it's a way for you to show how proud you are in marrying him. And you are proud of him, aren't you?" Kasumi said, firmly.

Shepard lifted both hands and held them in front of her, like a prisoner. "Okay, Kasumi. I'll straighten up and fly right. Can we at least get this done in the next two hours?"

**Shepard: Shopping?**

Two hours, she realized, three hours later, had been a blissfully optimistic timetable. There were stores on the Presidium level of the Citadel that Shepard had never even noticed were _there_ before. _Maybe the Keepers just built them this week?_ she thought tiredly. Kasumi and Tali were having _entirely_ too much fun with this process.

Her comm crackled to life at her wrist, as her omnitool flared to life. "How's it going?" Garrus asked, sounding as if he, too, was enjoying her discomfiture.

"I'm beginning to understand why they wouldn't let me bring a gun. Another hour or two of this, and I might put a bullet in my brain." Her tone was sour, but she kept it down, in deference to the excitement of her companions and the sensibilities of the hanar shopkeeper. "Seriously, why a hanar would have a formalwear shop is boggling my mind."

"You're really not enjoying this? Even a little bit?"

"I've been living in armor and uniforms for so long now, I've gotten used to everything matching without having to think about it." She grimaced, and then added, with reluctant honesty, lowering her voice so that the other women couldn't hear her, "I guess there's a deep-down bit of girlishness that's gratified by all this."

"How small of a bit?"

"Maybe around the size of a quark."

Garrus began to chuckle. "Got it narrowed down at all?"

"I told them 'not white' because blue facepaint and white cloth are a bad idea together. Beyond that, I told them that I view this as a hostage situation, and they're not getting anything else out of me besides name, rank, and serial number."

Garrus guffawed outright. "Don't expect me to snipe them for you. Ahh . . . I suppose that means that you probably aren't going to be happy that your captors are about to receive reinforcements."

"What?" _Who the hell is left that would participate in this insanity?_ "Don't tell me Miranda's back from her assignment already."

A hand touched her shoulder. "Not Miranda," said a light voice behind her. "Me." Shepard looked up into the pale blue face of Liara T'Soni, the Shadow Broker herself. Liara gave her a hug, which Shepard returned as best she could without actually touching the asari any more than necessary. Liara was a friend, but asari tended to treat _any_ form of friendship with an excess of emotion that registered on human sensibilities as romantic.

Shepard wasn't squeamish, but trying to ensure that she didn't hurt her friend's feelings, while making it clear that friendship was as far as her own feelings went, made dealing with Liara something of a chore at times. Initially, the asari's interest in her had been in the Prothean data downloaded into her mind.

Then, of course, there'd been the information on the Cipher that another asari, Shiala, had crammed into Shepard's mind through a mental contact that Shepard had _not requested. _Liara had initiated a similar connection, again, over Shepard's expressed reluctance. Liara had commented, later, that Shepard's ability to keep a part of herself distant, outside of the mental union made her somewhat intriguing to asari. A challenge, apparently. Nevermind that it was the psychic equivalent of rape. Apparently, to some asari, no didn't really mean _no_.

Well, it explained Morinth, anyway. _That _whole fiasco had been a nightmare. Being forced to rely entirely on Samarra to rescue her? Garrus had been furious at the justicar for her manipulation of the situation, and for her insistence that any further backup would spook the target. Shepard knew damn well that he'd ignored the asari, and had found a sniper position outside the apartment window, ready to blow the ardat-yakshi's head off if necessary. Knowing that he'd been there, outside, watching, had been the only thing that had kept her calm enough to maintain the ruse for as long as she had. The thought of being essentially raped to death, psychically, and how close her will had been to breaking, had left her shaking and nauseous even after Morinth's battered corpse had been left safely behind on Omega.

Shepard repressed the memory and a shudder, focusing on the present, the peaceful pastels of the shop around her, not the dark and unpleasant shapes of memory. "Liara . . . ah, nice to see you. Don't you have better things to be doing?" It was difficult to find a delicate way in which to ask _don't you have secrets to be prying out and governments to topple?_

"Feron is handling matters back at the shop. He's a very good information broker himself," Liara responded solemnly, her expression serene. "He told me that he thought I needed a break before I worked myself into exhaustion."

"He's a good man."

"The best."

Shepard looked into the sales area, and sighed. "So, I'm sure you have an opinion on the whole. . . dress situation here." Even saying the words made her feel ridiculous. _Geth situation. Collector situation. Reaper situation. Fate of the galaxy situation. __**Dress**__ situation?_

"I think that, all things considered, you should probably wear something turian."

_That_ got Kasumi's attention, and the thief drifted back over. "And how are we going to get something like that fitted to a human body in two days?" she demanded.

"By applying large sums of money to the project, of course," Liara replied calmly. "I believe my credit accounts are up to the task."

Shepard sighed. "Do I get _any_ say in this?" she asked.

"Name, rank, and serial number, Shepard," Tali responded. "This is obviously a situation where you can't help yourself. So it is _our_ responsibility to help _you_ for a change."

In the end, Shepard closed her eyes, let them put a dress over her head, and walked in front of the mirrors. Opening her eyes again, she wondered who else was trying on gowns, and why the woman was in her dressing room . . . . _oh._

It took her a disorienting moment to realize that the image in front of her was her own reflection. The dress was blue, bringing out her eyes, and a perfect match for Garrus' clan and colony colors. It was also startlingly high-necked . . . but had sheer panels over the breasts and at the sides, exposing her "very supportive" waist and hips before sweeping down to her feet.

"Just human enough to fit, and just turian enough in style," Liara declared in a tone of satisfaction.

Shepard simply stared at her reflection for a moment longer, realizing that she was blushing, the fine lines of her residual scars showing in a pale tracery against that red. "I . . . ah. I like it," she finally muttered.

"What was that, Shep? Couldn't quite hear you."

Shepard cleared her throat. "It was nothing that couldn't be explained by Stockholm syndrome, Kasumi."

The rest of the afternoon went more or less along the same lines, except that Tali, giggling in a lingerie store, wound up making more purchases than the rest of them combined. The salarian shopkeeper's expression was slightly befuddled.

Liara, raising a questioning brow, whispered to Kasumi and Shepard, "Reegar?"

"Reegar," they chorused in agreement, grinning.

Shepard made it back to the _Normandy_ just in time to see what looked like half the crew departing. Hell, even _Joker_ was leaving the ship. "Whoa, wait a minute," she said, slightly concerned. "Did a work crew set off a fire, or something?"

"Nah, we're just taking Garrus out for a few drinks," Joker assured her. "Not actually a bachelor party, because, you know, all the really _fun_ places here probably won't serve a former C-Sec agent . . . "

Shepard sighed. "Right. Okay, have a good night, guys. Shore leave rules."

"Yeah, yeah, don't come back so incapacitated that you're still drunk on duty the next morning." Joker nodded, and slowly creaked down the pier. Garrus gave her something of a shrug with a _what can you do_ spread of his hands.

As soon as they were out of earshot, Shepard looked at Kasumi. "I hate to ask, since you've been on your feet all day. . . "

"I'll go keep an eye on him."

"Not him. _Them_. Garrus, I trust. It's the _rest_ of them that I'm worried about." Shepard's lips went thin as she looked back over her shoulder at the males of various species departing in the distance. _Besides, the chances of him finding a gunship without me here on the Citadel are pretty slim. Chances of being poisoned by a batarian bartender are a bit better, but still, pretty slim._

_Probably._

"If you trust him, you trust him," Kasumi told her, unflappable as always. "I'd rather stay in with you and the rest of the girls, and see how many drinks we need to pour into you to get you to tell us the good stuff."

Shepard stopped so suddenly, Tali actually walked into her back. "What an excellent notion!" Liara told Kasumi, catching Shepard by the elbow and propelling the human woman further into the ship.

**Shepard and the girls**

Two hours later, Shepard was still nursing her second ice brandy, while the others were easily on their fourth or fifth drinks. Kasumi showed no signs at all of inebriation, but continued to pepper the commander with fairly shameless questions. "Look, think of this as a charitable act," the small Japanese woman wheedled. "I'm never going to find someone who comes even close to Keji, so this is my chance to live a blossoming romance all over again through you. And just think of Tali!" She grabbed the quarian's forearm. "The girl needs tips on how to get a man's attention!"

"I do _not_," Tali replied, indignantly She'd clicked a sterile container of quarian wine into a panel in her suit's right arm after clinking the sealed ampoule to everyone else's glasses. There was no way to know how much of it she had ingested, but her voice sounded slurred through her suit's filters. "I just need to know how to get the conversation started."

Kasumi chortled. "Steal Reegar's suit helmet, dear, and tell him he can only have it back if he kisses you."

Tali almost shrieked. "I couldn't _do_ that, Kasumi! That would put his life in danger—wait. Who said I was interested in Reegar, anyway?" It was, of course, far too late for her to try for plausible deniability at this point.

Shepard, relieved that the focus had shifted, chimed in amicably, "My advice, Tali, is to be direct with Reegar. Sometimes you have to hit a guy over the head before he understands that you really _are_ interested." She shook her head. "Hmm. Tell him that he saved your life back on Haestrom, but that what you're about to say has nothing to do with gratitude. And tell him how much it meant to you, when he spoke up for you in front of the Admiralty board. Then tell him that you've always enjoyed the sound of his voice, but that you'd really like to know what it sounds like without the suit filters getting in the way."

"Whoooo, smooth talker!" Kasumi teased. "This is like watching a modern version of _Cyrano de Bergerac_."

Tali leaned forward. "Then what, invite him to a clean room?"

"Sure, why not?" Shepard took a sip of her drink. "You have hygiene facilities in those rooms, right?"

"Absolutely."

"Assuming he says yes—and considering that he called four _admirals_ assholes and told them if they exiled you, they should exile him, too, I think it's fair to say you have his _interest_." Shepard took a sip of her drink. "If I were you, I'd tell him, 'Reegar, I'm just a little afraid that after so much time in this suit, that I'm going to smell like a vorcha's underwear.'" Shepard's imitation of Tali's inflections was as good as she could make it.

Liara choked on her drink. "That hardly seems romantic, Shepard!"

"Hey, he's a Migrant Fleet Marine. I'm an Alliance Marine. We're straight-forward kinds of people. Trust me," Shepard assured Tali. "He'll probably tell you that just smelling _you_ for the first time will be enough for him, or something along those lines. That's when you tell him, 'That's a lovely thing to say, but I still really want to take a long, hot shower first thing in the room.' Then invite him to join you . . . if he wants to." Shepard lifted her glass in a little salute to Tali, who was sitting stock-still. "What, you don't think it would work?" she asked the quarian.

"Oh, I think it will _work_. I'm just . . . I think I need to send him a message. Right now, in fact." Tali opened her omnitool and started to tap on it. Shepard chuckled under her breath. The FTL transmissions had to be burning a hole in Tali's credit accounts, but the quarian had rarely seemed as happy as when she was writing to Reegar.

Kasumi sipped at her sake, "So, did you have to hit Garrus over the head, Shep?"

_Damnit_. _So much for a switch of focus. _"I don't kiss and tell, Kasumi. But yeah, I did have to be pretty direct. He'd never thought about crossing the species line, and, well, I'd never thought about it, either."

"Never?" That was Liara, much to Shepard's discomfort.

"Nope, never," she responded, ensuring that her tone was bright, cheerful, and carefully oblivious.

"What changed your mind?" Tali asked, still tapping away.

Shepard squirmed in her chair. "You guys need to work on your interrogation techniques," she informed them. "You need brighter lights to shine into my eyes, and one of you needs to be the bad cop."

Kasumi wagged a finger at her. "I thought that was Garrus' job."

All pretense of play dropped from Shepard. "He's not a bad cop. He's a good cop who got burned out fighting a corrupt damn system." The words carried a level of vehemence that she hadn't quite intended. "Seriously, we know that Cerberus has infiltrated C-Sec. The Shadow—"

Shepard cut herself off, and mentally issued a course correction. There was really no way of knowing if they'd gotten _all_ the listening devices aboard the ship, and while watching every word she spoke made her think she'd given into paranoia, there _were_ topics that warranted that level of concern. Liara's identity as the new Shadow Broker was one of them. More quietly, but no less intensely, she went on, "God only knows how many _other_ organizations have infiltrated it as well. I almost think he was the only cop left who _wasn't_ on multiple payrolls."

Kasumi raised her hands in surrender. "Sorry, Shep. Didn't mean to hit a sore spot. But still, you didn't really answer the question."

Shepard thought for a long moment, and then shrugged. It would get them off her back. "I guess I realized it's all about the _person_ for me. And he's the person I trust most in the universe . . . and he deserves so damn much better than he's gotten. For two years I wasn't there to make it better or to help in any way. I mean to change that." She finished the rest of her drink in a single swig, and then stood up, heading for the nearest hatch.

She was about to say good night, when Liara gestured for her to wait. "I have one more question," she said in her sweet, formal way. "I ask this strictly in my capacity as an information broker, of course."

Shepard regarded her warily. "Yeah, what it is?"

Liara's face broke into a smile. "I'd really like to know: Don't the scales scratch?"

"I've been wondering the _same thing_!" Kasumi exclaimed.

Shepard stared at them. "You're a bunch of voyeurs," she accused after a moment. "While we're violating taboos, why don't we go ahead and ask Tali how she _brushes her damn teeth_ while we're at it?"

Tali squawked a little. "Quarians have excellent dental hygiene! The same system that delivers food to us, brushes our teeth!"

"So, what, you've got a whole series of little brushes that pop out inside the helmet somewhere, and just start cleaning, like a . . . like an old-fashioned carwash?" Shepard asked.

"I don't know what that is, but . . . really! Most people ask us how we go to the bathroom." Tali seemed flummoxed. "You're the only person who's ever asked me about brushing our teeth."

Shepard blinked. "I assumed the urine and feces were processed in the thigh compartments of the suit, like the stillsuits in that old twentieth century science fiction series . . . er . . . what's it called? Kasumi, I know you've got a copy in your library, but I'm drawing a blank."

"_Dune_," the little Japanese woman replied. "Yeah, I'd always assumed the same thing."

"What _I've_ always wondered," Liara put in, "is when a bartender tells you that the nuts in the red bowls are for quarians and turians . . . how under the stars does a quarian _eat them_?"

As Tali began a detailed explanation of sterilization procedures needed to allow a bar snack to enter her suit's miniaturized airlock system, Shepard took the opportunity to slip out the door. She didn't realize Kasumi had followed her out until the smaller woman touched her shoulder. Shepard turned, startled, and Kasumi took a step back, holding her hands up. "Sorry. Wasn't expecting you there."

"Not a problem. Just wanted to point out that you _really_ know how to derail a conversation when you want to, Shep."

"That conversation is not getting back on its rails, Kasumi. It's no one's business."

"_That_ fact is not stopping anyone from speculating." The little thief pulled a datapad out of a pocket. "I don't want to dump _everything_ on you at once, but you should probably look at this. It's . . . one way that people out there—" and her gesture seemed to encompass the entire galaxy, "are looking at you and Garrus right now."

Shepard took the datapad warily. "This isn't that porn movie, is it? _Shepard Does the Citadel_, or whatever it's called?"

She saw the lips curve upwards under the shadow of Kasumi's hood. "I'm surprised you know about that, Shep. Although I'm told that the scene with the volus ambassador got an award for its technical difficulty."

Shepard put one hand over her eyes. "You've been on the same ship as Joker for several months now, Kasumi. _Why_ are you surprised?"

The other woman laughed, a ripple of sound. "Don't worry. This is more along the lines of _Pride and Prejudice._"

Shepard winced. "There are people out there writing interspecies bodice-rippers?"

"Oh, yes. And the main characters are named _Lillith_ _Sheridan _and _Varrus Gakarian_. It's that subtle, I tell you."

"And why do I need to read this?"

"It's a security issue. This is part one of several briefings I'll be giving you in the next few days. We'll talk about the messages you've been receiving sometime tomorrow."

That sounded ominous. But Shepard had made Kasumi her head of security for a damned good reason, and she had to trust that the woman was doing her job. "All right. I'll see how much I can squeeze in before I pass out tonight," she said, surrendering, and headed for the elevator.

"So, Shep?"

Lilitu turned back as the doors opened. "Yeah?"

"_Do_ the scales scratch?"

"No worse than a human guy's five o'clock shadow, and even then, only when you go against the grain."

Kasumi's smile was winsome under the hood. "So, are there scales _everywhere?_"

"Oh, for god's sake, Kasumi. Why _would_ there be scales _there_? Scales are external structures, like hair or feathers. If scales were internal, then female turians would never have sex more than once in their lives. Last I checked, there were eight billion turians on Palaven alone. I'm thinking that they don't have any more objections than I do." Shepard gave her a look. "That's privileged information, Kasumi."

"I _am_ your head of security."

The doors slid shut on Kasumi's laughter.

**Shepard and Garrus**

She woke up late that night, or at least, early the next morning as Garrus opened door of their quarters. The comm panel read 03:30, at least as far as her sleep-bleared eyes could tell. "Oh, good," she mumbled. "Didn't have to bail anyone out."

"Well, not me, anyway." The bed shifted as his weight compressed the foam of the mattress, and she could smell the exotic scent of turian brandy on his breath and skin.

She was silent as his arms wrapped around her, almost drifting back to sleep. Then her eyes snapped back open as her brain caught up. "Wait, what?"

"It's taken care of. Don't worry about it. I'm sure you'll get a full report from Kasumi in the morning."

"Didn't send her out after you. Thought about it, but then all the girls decided they wanted to pour drinks into me and ask a lot of questions."

"Huh." The bed creaked under his weight as he shifted his position. "Thought maybe I was slipping, considering I didn't catch sight of her. I fully expected you to send her out to watch my back tonight, especially since I'd asked her to watch yours today."

"Sorry, but Kasumi told me that _since_ I trusted you, then I should _trust_ you." Her mind woke up a little further. So, the offer of assistance hadn't been pure, spontaneous friendship on Kasumi's part. Well, part of it might have been; the woman had layer after layer to her personality. "I guess it _would _have been hard to keep an eye on my six when trying stuff on," she admitted, letting her eyes slide closed again.

"Especially since the shopkeepers on the Presidium tend to object to people bringing guns into their stores." He yawned, and then shifted again. "Why is there a datapad in the bed?" He removed it from its position and tossed it on the nightstand beside his pistol.

"My homework assignment from Kasumi. Apparently, there are humans out there writing romance novels about us."

There was a moment of silence. "About us?" he repeated, sounding a little strangled.

"Well, it's about some human Spectre named Lillith Sheridan and some turian ex-cop named Varrus Gakarian," she said, waking up a little more. "You think that's enough evidence?"

He snorted. "Any good?"

"Not really. I got bored right around when _Lillith_, after flirting all day with everyone else, male _and_ female, on the crew, climbs into bed beside _Varrus_, tells him what a good friend he was, falls asleep, and all he does is hold her alllllll night long." Her voice was sing-song. "Just a biiiiig teddy bear. Oh, and apparently, you're a really good dancer, too. You apparently just up and start mamboing with me to cheer me up when I'm feeling down and lonely."

That prompted a snort. "Okay, someone clearly hasn't noticed that most turian culture revolves around _violence_. For the spirits' sake, gladiatorial combat is shown live every weekend, and there are conditions under which trial by combat is still practiced."

She'd watched some of the live broadcasts of the gladiators on the extranet with him, so that wasn't a surprise, but the trial by combat concept certainly was. "Like what?"

"Divorce proceedings and custody hearings, mainly."

She chuckled. "Humans could learn from the turian judicial system, that's all I'll say."

He rubbed a hand along her arm. "Although, if _you_ wanted to learn to dance for me, I'd be okay with that," he told her, sounding almost virtuous. "Maybe like those asari dancers at Afterlife?"

She turned over to face him in the dark, now completely awake. "Not going to happen, Vakarian."

He chuckled. "A man can dream."

She cleared her throat. "Anyhow, I wouldn't sweat the book thing too much. Whoever she is, she obviously thinks men are Ken dolls."

"That we're _what_?"

"Historically, a male doll that used to be given to little girls. It was famous for not being entirely anatomically correct."

"Does that mean . . . ?" He let the words hang there.

"Well, yes and no. You're only _symbolically_ gelded. She did spend half a chapter describing your, ah, physical attributes."

"Oh, great spirits." He rolled to his back and she could sense him putting an arm over his face.

"If it's any comfort, it's pretty clear that she'd never consulted any of Mordin's anatomy charts," she added, helpfully, propping herself up on one elbow. "She seems to think that stroking your fringe would be a major turn-on for you."

Garrus started to laugh so hard that the bed shook. "Basic biology should tell you that's not the case! It's there to provide an extra layer of radiation protection for the skull, and for courtship and aggression displays."

"_I_ know that, but then, I have reason to know." She'd done her homework, and anything she'd had questions about, he'd been happy to explain. She _hadn't_ known at first that while turians could have sex at any time, just as humans, bonobos, and dolphins did, for the social and emotional benefits, that their females went into estrus only three to four times a year. When they did so, their fringes flushed with blood, turning a dark blue, usually prompting a territorial response from their mates.

_He_ had been surprised when she'd told him that human females went into estrus once a month, and that there were no physical signs at all. "That doesn't make any sense," he'd objected at the time. "It makes sense if you're using hormones to _suppress_ the chances of conception, as most of our women do during their required military service. But it's as if evolution has designed your species for confusion."

"Well, it explains some of the differences between our species," she'd said, laughing. "For starters, since _you_ have such limited windows of opportunity, you pretty much have to be able to keep at it until it, ah, _takes_." She'd found herself blushing a bit. Turian stamina had turned out to be quite a surprise for her. The refractory period was almost nonexistent, for starters.

"It certainly explains why human males always seem to be in chase mode," he'd agreed. "This is going to be . . . interesting. Or exhausting." He'd paused, and grinned at her. "Possibly both."

"What, you think you're going to find yourself permanently territorial about me?"

He'd leaned over and nipped the side of her neck. "Maybe. Would you mind?"

"Not really," she'd replied, grinning back.

Lost in the memory for a moment, she roused as he asked, "Did you fall back asleep?"

"Nah, just thinking." She rolled over, turned on a light, and reached over him for the datapad. "Here. You can read it for yourself." She scrolled through the chapters till she found the right page, and handed it to him.

"I don't read English very well yet. Speaking it is pretty easy, but your writing system is odd. And my translator VI is all the way over _there._" Garrus pointed across the room, squinted at the pad for a moment, and then shrugged. "My head's spinning anyway."

"Sorry, I forgot you'd had a few." She took the datapad back, and started to read it out loud.

By the end of the second paragraph, he'd put his hands over his face again. "I don't know whether I feel more emasculated or more violated." His tone sounded ruefully amused.

"Oh, I'm feeling more than a little violated, myself."

"Think we can sue the author for libel?"

"_You_ probably could. I can't. Spectre. Public figure. EDI told me it was the same as when I asked her if I could sue that one porn video's filmmakers and distributors. I could _try_, but that would just give them publicity and I would probably lose anyway."

"So, what do we do, ignore it?" He obviously didn't like the fact that there wasn't a way to fight back.

"Be aware of it, and if asked by a reporter—and you _know_ Emily Wong will probably ask about it tomorrow in her exclusive—say we either haven't seen it or found it boring." Her own voice was resigned.

He edged a little closer in bed. "So . . . since you're awake anyway . . . maybe you could do me a favor?"

"Hmm?"

"Could you check to see if I've been gelded? I'm really quite concerned at this point."

She laughed, and her fingers slid downwards obligingly. "No, you still seem to be male." She paused. "Assertively male, actually." She glanced at the clock. "I really _do_ need to get some sleep tonight."

"I can pretend to be human, if you like." His voice was muffled.

"No, that's okay. Really. Not necessary. Stop that!"

**Garrus**

Garrus was surprised the next morning when Kasumi came to see him down at the forward batteries. The little woman was, after all, a thief. While she'd never stolen anything around him, and he genuinely found, to his surprise, that he liked the small human, she represented a problem for him, in terms of the spirit of the law. She had what was, admittedly, stolen property in her quarters, and he usually had to bite his tongue to avoid saying at least _something_ about that fact.

He'd wondered why Shepard had made her head of security. Kasumi had explained it once over lunch in the mess hall. "She keeps me around because the two of you think too much alike. You're both straight-line thinkers. See a problem, eliminate the problem, move on to the next one. Me, I think twisty. Pretend I'm just another specialist, like Mordin, and we shouldn't have any problems." Her quick smile under the hood had been charming, but he wasn't fooled.

But now, here she was, seeking him out. "Garrus!" the tiny woman greeted him with a smile under her hood. "How was your evening?"

"Let's see, one turian, two krogan, one salarian—whose people don't get married, and thus, don't see what all the fuss is about—Joker, and three other humans from the rest of the crew. Oh, and Alenko showed up halfway through," he said, testing the variance in a circuit with a meter as he spoke. "In a word . . . uncomfortable."

She laughed.

They'd wound up in what was loosely called a sports bar in the lower wards. There had been silence at first. Males, no matter what their species, were fairly universal in their disinclination to talk for the sake of talking, but this had been an uncomfortable silence.

Large vid screens showed different sporting events from across the galaxy. Of course, what different species considered competition varied . . . widely. Grunt and Wrex had stared at one screen in particular, uncomprehendingly. "I don't get it," Grunt had finally said. "They're all wearing armor, but there's no blood and no weapons. Every time a fight _finally_ breaks out, they all fall on one another, and the judges in the black and white striped shirts stop the match. What's the _point_?"

Joker had sipped his drink. "That, my friend, is football. There's not really supposed to be a point. It's more of a . . . state of being."

Wrex had rumbled then, "If I want philosophy, I'll read a book. Five hundred vid screens in this place, and there's _nothing_ on?" The screen next to him flickered to a different feed.

Joker craned his neck to look. "Salarian league curling?" Sure enough, teams of salarians were on the ice, scrubbing with brooms. "Good god, no." Joker touched a control on the table, bringing up an icy cityscape. "Here we go. The Edmonton Blood Dragons, going for the Urban Combat Championship back on Earth. All the fighting you could want."

The table had returned to silence for a while, as they'd watched the tiny figures fighting in the metal and ice, ruins created entirely as an arena for the Urban Combat League. Garrus had cleared his throat, and lobbed a grenade right into the middle of the table. "What I don't understand is why they wear armor. Isn't the point of competition to see whose skills are the best, not who has the best gear?"

"You're just saying that because turian gladiators carry nothing but spears, swords, and a shield into the arena," Wrex told him. "A lot of flash and showmanship, but none of _them_ have scars."

"That's because they're good enough to _avoid_ being scarred."

The arguing had started then, each person advocating a different sport as an example of the purest skills, and the evening had started going _much _more smoothly. For a while, anyway. Mordin had furiously scribbled notes, probably for a monograph on multicultural male bonding rituals for _Xenography Quarterly_. Then Alenko had shown up.

He shook his head, not really wanting to discuss the evening, and warned Kasumi, "I've already gotten a recap of the book. No need to coach me on what to say about it."

She laughed out loud. "No, no, this is different. Same general issue, but different aspect. I need you to come with me to the human embassy. That's where the ceremony's going to be held, right?"

"Kasumi, I have a headache the size of a small moon. Can whatever this is, wait?"

"A hangover? I didn't know turians could _get_ those."

He grimaced. "We don't."

She cocked her head to the side. "So, what's the deal?"

Garrus sighed. He really hadn't wanted to explain this. "_Don't_ tell her. She's got enough on her plate as it is. Alenko bought me a drink last night. Said it was a custom between human males to drink together to show reconciliation. That there were, in his words, 'no hard feelings.' I figured, what the hell. Smelled okay, so I drank it. Unfortunately, the elcor bartender had thought that the drink was for a human, so, ten minutes later, my lips and throat started to swell shut."

The tiny woman said several words in her native language. Garrus had a feeling that none of them were good. "No lasting harm done," he added quickly, raising a hand. "I don't think he even realized what he'd done until Mordin jabbed me with some kind of a shot and read him a lecture. It's between him and me, and I am _not _mentioning this to Shepard unless Alenko brings it up, first."

"Oh, I won't go tattling." Kasumi assured him. "But I still really need you to help me look at the embassy."

Garrus gave her a skeptical look. "I really have no opinion about the flower arrangements."

Her usual air of light amusement fell away, replaced with cool professionalism. "Yeoman Kelly and I have been keeping quite a few of the messages from trickling through onto your terminal or the commander's. There are a _lot_ of people out there obsessed with the two of you. That obsession takes different forms with different people. Some of them just fantasize, like that book I had the commander reading last night. Others, well . . . you've both been getting death threats."

He blinked, once, and then he leaned forward, suddenly all business. "Death threats? Any ideas as to the source?"

She shrugged. "None seem to be turian. Cross-species relationships aren't frowned on in your culture. It's even fairly common, at least with asari."

Garrus remembered General Septimus, sulking in Chora's Den, because the asari Consort had rejected him. "It's not actually common, but it's only disapproved of if the relationship leads you to act without honor," he corrected. He'd certainly felt contempt for Septimus, back in the day, but the general had certainly _earned_ disapproval. Sniveling in a bar, spreading lies about your former lover was not the path of honor.

Kasumi nodded in understanding. "Okay, you've gotten a few _generally _disapproving ones, but nothing horrible, nothing that questions your personal honor. The ones from _human _sources, though, definitely make us look pretty damn bad. Terra Firma, definitely. A couple EDI flagged as coming from within Cerberus, but they could be fakes." Kasumi gave him a wry grin. "Usually, I think the commander would have thought of this stuff herself, but the human brain only has room for so many worries at once. And I figured that giving her _one damn day_ to be a normal woman and get married in peace could be my wedding present to you two."

Garrus stood, moving with quiet purpose for the hatch. "Let's go take a look at the embassy, then." He could hear the growl in his own voice.

A half an hour later, he'd rejected two of the rooms Anderson had offered as venues. "Too exposed," he told the Councilor, shaking his head. "There are sniper positions across the Presidium with clear lines of sight for this balcony. If I could make the shot, chances are, there's someone else out there who could, too. Let's try something further inside."

They finally settled on a room, and Kasumi scrambled up a ladder to access the ceiling ventilation shaft, working on it with tools from her belt. As they were alone in the room for the moment, Garrus looked up at her, feeling a grimace tighten his face. "This is as safe as we can make it," he told her. "I almost wish Thane were here to cross-check our work. I didn't like having him around much, and I know Shepard felt the same, but still . . . he's an expert on infiltration and assassination."

Kasumi looked down and shrugged. "Beggars can't be choosers. We'll do what we can, and hope it's enough." She gestured around the room. "It's not the _prettiest_ place in the embassy. Not what I'd pick for a wedding, at all. It's small, and it has no windows, and gunmetal gray walls. But it's secure. And that's what matters, at the moment."

"I wish I understood why these people are getting so worked up about us." Garrus found a wall to put his back against, and folded his arms across his chest. "It would help to understand their psychology, and the approach they're likely to make. If they go through with it, that is. I want to see the messages when we're done here."

Kassumi paused in her work. "I figured you would. I'll have 'em queued up and sorted by my threat analyses when we get back to the ship." She did something delicate with a tool. "Have you ever looked at the old reports from the human newsfeeds about Shep?"

Garrus shrugged. "I read the ones about her when she was first appointed a Spectre. Anything before that, well, no. Felt too much like a background check. And I respected her too much to violate her privacy."

"You're about the only person in the galaxy who _hasn't_ violated her privacy, Garrus. It's all public record . . . so go take a look. She was famous long before she became a Spectre." Kasumi removed a miniature welding set from her belt, put on dark glasses, and settled in to melt the metal of the vent into its frame. "Between that, and the pride a lot of people felt in having a human Spectre, it's made her a very visible symbol of humanity itself. They feel, I suppose, a sort of _ownership_ in her. Even people who only felt _approval_ for her before, feel an investment in her. So her actions thus have an effect on them. In their minds, at least."

"Sounds like slavery," Garrus growled.

"Pretty much," Kasumi agreed glumly. "I didn't say it made sense or even made humans look very good." She shut down the torch and attached a tiny device to the ceiling beside it. A shield flared into blue life across the opening, and then vanished again. "I've got a couple of miniature shields like this that I'll want you and Shep to wear. I'm going to tell her it's her 'something borrowed.'" Kasumi gave him a smirk, but the comment went completely over his head.


	9. Hate and Love

**Chapter 9: Hate and Love**

Later that afternoon, Garrus settled at a table in the mess hall, a cup of hot _apha_ (the turian equivalent of coffee) at his elbow, and started reading through the threats. Kasumi found a spot next to him, and settled in to read one of her antique books. She sniffed at his cup. "That stuff always smells so good," she commented.

"Don't try it. It's on the 'invariably toxic' list."

'Well, you and Shep would know," she commented, and turned a page, looking serene.

Garrus was anything but calm at the moment. Kasumi had included samples of what she considered "non-serious hate mail" for comparison, and that's where the former C-Sec operative started.

After the first dozen or so, Garrus snorted. "Either my translator is having problems, or none of these people can spell."

"It's not the translator. They also tend to use a lot of capital letters to show just how _angry_ they are," the little woman informed him. "Some of it is a lack of education. And some of it is writing in a hurry, sending the message before their social conscience catches up with them. That's why I've classified them as _probably_ non-serious. A real loony could slip through in there, I suppose."

"That's hardly comforting, Kasumi."

As they were talking, Alenko came through, and sat down at a nearby table. He cleared his throat. "Quite a research project you've got there."

Garrus grunted. He detested the human, but whatever his flaws, he was at least _trying_ to work with them all. "Here," he said, tossing Alenko the datapad he'd just worked through. "Enjoy."

Kaidan caught it, took a sip of his coffee, and started reading. He winced.

"Yeah, it's _great fun_, isn't it?" Garrus' tone was sarcastic. He flicked to the next message, and sighed. "Every time I think the galaxy has run out of ways to make me disappointed in it, it finds a new one." His talons tapped the screen. "Okay, _this_ one compares sex with other species to bestiality. I think it's pretty clear that there's a difference between sapient and non-sapient life, and no one could possibly mistake a turian for a varren."

Kasumi grimaced. "Ah, now you're getting to the good stuff. That message relates to this group of files." She pulled up a folder marked _Religious zealots_. "These folks are from the Shining Light, Blood of the Lamb, and the Adam and Eve Coalition. Three of Earth's major monotheistic religions all center around the same basic books. In those books, it's said that in the beginning, God created the earth, and the plants, and the animals, and then he created Adam, the first man, who was given an earthly paradise called the Garden of Eden. And to Adam, he gave guardianship over all the animals, told him to go forth and name them, and so on. Made Eve out of Adam's rib, gave her to him for a wife, and all that jazz."

Garrus thought this sounded vaguely familiar. "But he had a different wife first, a spirit named—"

"Lilith. Yeah. Surprised you know that."

"Shepard told me about it. Said Lilith actually came from some older culture, where she was called Lilitu."

"Ahh. Well, she dropped Adam for some evil spirit, or something like that."

"I was told she became the mate of the archangel of death."

Kasumi's head jerked up. "Shit! How widely known _is_ that nickname of yours?" Alenko looked up, clearly puzzled, but Garrus had no intention of explaining the reference at the moment. Kasumi spun up a half-dozen files, hunting through them. "I swear, I think I remember seeing something about that story in here, but it didn't make sense to me at the time. I was raised Shinto, so this is all gobbledygook to me." She frowned. "I'll get back to you if I find it again and if it turns out to be serious. Anyhow, because these folks believe that Adam, and thus, all humanity, is superior to the beasts, they tend to view all aliens as beasts. Thus, not only is it bestiality to have sex with an alien, but it compromises the superiority of humans. Since humans are superior, it lessens them to interact with other species as if they were equals, if that makes any sense."

Garrus put a hand to his forehead, feeling his headache return. "The fact that turians and asari and elcor aren't mentioned in their books doesn't disturb this line of thought?"

Across the table, Alenko snorted. "Garrus, these are the same people who, a few hundred years ago, thought that the Earth was the center of the universe and that the sun moved around it, because these books told them it was true. That there couldn't _be_ any other sapient life in the universe, because it had _only_ been created on Earth. That life on Earth only went back six thousand years, and fossils were just a hoax perpetrated by evil spirits to deceive humans."

Garrus squinted at the man. "And the fact that there are asari who have _video records_ of ancestors only six generations back who remember life _seven_ thousand years ago makes them. . . also evil spirits? Liars? Frauds?"

"Got it in one, Garrus."

The turian sighed. The insights of both humans, no matter how unpleasant, were valuable. "Okay, that's not a problem I can solve. What's the next batch?"

Kasumi's fingers tapped on a fresh datapad, and brought the next folder up. This one was marked _Political movements_. "These are on the same level," she explained. "Only instead of finding a religious truth to shape their lives around, these people found a political one. Cerberus, Terra Firma. They hearken back to Earth's imperialist past, particularly the nineteenth century. They think humans have a 'manifest destiny' to expand and control the galaxy."

"I'm familiar with them. The fact that the galaxy is already fairly populated and controlled was a pretty bad shock for them." He scanned through the first dozen messages. Half of them had the same bad spelling, grammar, and capital letters that Kasumi had pointed out in the religious groups' messages. "You'd think that these people had better things to do with their time and energy."

"Humans are social animals. We always make time to talk. This is, however, more the social equivalent of monkeys flinging their poop." Kasumi flicked open the last folder. This one was marked as _Problematic_. "Okay, those two groups were of concern, but these are the ones that really worry me. Most of them have keywords and phrases that triggered alerts in the psych filters I ran on them. Many of them display sociopathic tendencies." She glanced across the table at Alenko. "Some of them aren't sociopathic, but personal. There's one from Toombs, the other survivor of Akuze. Some are from other people with whom she served in the Alliance."

Alenko had the grace to flinch a little at that, but held out his hand for a datapad. "Let me take a look. I might know them personally, and can tell you more about them." Kasumi and Garrus traded glances, and after a moment, Garrus nodded permission.

As the human began to look through his batch, Garrus began to read his own. After several moments, he became aware of a grating noise. It took him a moment to realize that it was the sound of his talons scraping into the plastic of the table in front of him, and stopped.

"Steady, Garrus," Kasumi counseled.

"This one," he grated, "describes in intimate detail how the man would like to rape my mate and show her what a _real man_ is like. How _should_ I be reacting?" Suddenly, the romance novel he and Shepard had laughed about last night didn't seem so bad.

Perspective was a wonderful thing.

"I know it's hard, but you need to be in cop-mode to read these," Kasumi told him. "Right now, it's personal. I can see it in your eyes; you're making a list of names in your head. Trust me, you will run out of bullets before they run out of hate."

_No, I wouldn't. One bullet would solve __**this**__ problem. Then I'd move on to the next._ He closed the file, touching the pad with delicate care, and opened the next.

Alenko cleared his throat. "Can I mention something here? I'm not big on religion, but Ashley was. I remember her telling me that Lilith was exiled from the Garden because she refused to be submissive to Adam." He tapped on one of the letters he was looking at. "This one mixes religion and politics and the personal. I think it might have been the one you were thinking of a moment ago, Kasumi." He handed the pad to Garrus, who held it out so that Kasumi could read it over his shoulder.

_To: Commander L. Shepard, Normandy_

_ From: [Encrypted transmission, Alliance military domain signature traced]_

_ As Lilith refused to be subservient to Adam, you in your pride and your arrogance _

_ have refused to be subservient to your people. You rejected one of your own kind, _

_ sent another of your own to her death, and have given yourself to the _

_ Deceiver, in his guise as Samael, and walk with servants of the Liar. You _

_ dishonor the memory of those who died at Shanxi. You are corrupt. You are the _

_ woman with seven devils in you, and they will be cast out of you with seven _

_ bullets. _

_Repent. Turn your hand against these aliens. Cast them out of your crew, redeem yourself with their blood. Cast down their Council and restore humanity to its rightful place, and a place will be reserved for you among the lambs. Otherwise, you will be sent down into destruction with the goats. _

"Okay, that doesn't make any sense at all," Garrus commented, finding his focus, shoving the emotional reaction far away. He couldn't afford to be angry at the moment; Kasumi was right about that. But it was hard. "But it's at least spelled correctly. No excessive capital letters. Whoever wrote this was calm and focused."

"Could be a hoax," Kasumi commented thoughtfully. "Or we could have someone here who's already made his or her decision." She looked at Alenko. "You didn't write this, did you?"

He jumped, stared at her, and almost yelled back, "No! My god, what do I have to do around here to get people to cut me some damn slack!"

She raised a placating hand. "I had to ask. You _are_ Alliance; the domain signature matches up. You had a personal relationship with the commander. That's not exactly public knowledge, and there's a line in there that could be read as a reference to that. I needed to see your reaction, which seemed pretty genuine to me . . . and I'm a _good_ judge of character." She glanced at Garrus. "The Samael/Archangel thing could be a shot in the dark, but I'm going to ask Liara to check into how many people actually _know_ about that name. Could narrow it down a bit."

Alenko had taken a moment to regain his composure. "Ashley's death gets referenced, as well as the defeat at Shanxi. Maybe it's a friend or a relative of Ash. Half her family was in the service."

"Something to check into. Though how they'd know about Garrus' Omega nickname is beyond me," Kasumi said, making a note. She studied Garrus for a moment. "In the meantime, you need a break from this before you throw someone through a bulkhead. Why don't you go upstairs and cool off for a bit?"

Garrus nodded tensely, and headed for the elevator. Unfortunately, turians tended to 'cool off' with violence. Having no other outlet for his rage at this point, when the elevator door closed, he punched the wall. Then, nursing his knuckles, he tapped the elevator code that would take him to the gym.

**Garrus: Quarters**

Upstairs, an hour later, at the private terminal in their quarters, Garrus found himself conducting an extranet search, looking for the oldest records of Shepard's life. He was calmer now, having worked off his rage against a sparring dummy.

The first report began with old, grainy video shot on Mindoir. Garrus scanned the images. Her old home wasn't particularly prepossessing; prefabricated housing units, just as in a dozen other human colonies he'd visited. It could have been Eden Prime or Horizon or Chasca. . . except for two things. First, the sky had an unusual violet overtone to it. Second, in the background of one of the shots, he saw enormous Terran animals, each armed with huge white tusks. _Elephants_, he discovered when he checked the report's additional information links.

"Mindoir," a reporter intoned as the voiceover began, "A garden world in its most literal sense, having a variety of lush plantlife, but almost no native fauna. A world where the mistakes of Earth's past, in regards to its environment and wildlife, can be corrected. Or so the colony there plans. Dr. Roland Shepard, the head of the ecology team, has been working to integrate Terran life webs with the existing planetary ecology . . . . " The image changed to a reporter, interviewing a human male. Garrus wasn't good with human familial resemblances, but the man was tall for human, with the black hair and blue eyes that he was familiar with in Shepard.

Garrus skimmed ahead. There was footage on a fair number of different families. Some were Japanese, like Kasumi, sharing tea with the neighbors. Others had darker skins, looking more like Jacob. Everyone was friendly and smiling, and absorbed in the work of their colony.

He slowed when he recognized the faces again. This new feed, entitled _Report: Attack on Mindoir_, also had an archival feel to it, but looked a little more recent. The tall man—Shepard's father-was showing a reporter a building with caged animals in it. "We rehabilitate the injured animals right here, just outside our home," the human explained to the reporter. "My son and daughter are particularly good with the animals." The camera panned over to a boy and a girl. The boy was young, no more than a child, and was feeding a small, furry creature with a bottle. (_Wolf puppy: Predator, pack-animal_, the news report identified the creature. The puppy had disconcertingly sharp teeth, and if the information links were correct, would grow to be close to the size of a varren.) _No wonder she had no problem with Urz. Hell, she's been training the damned varren every night after dinner._

The girl . . . well, it was shocking how young she looked. The face was softer. The eyes didn't have that hard set to them. And the hair! It was waist-length and black, falling in soft hanks around her face as she, too, bottle-fed an injured creature some form of solution. Her animal was, however, a mass of brown-gray feathers with piercing golden eyes. (_Hawk: Raptor, bird of prey, noted for exceptional hunting skills and vision, _the newsfeed whispered when prompted_.)_

The girl glanced up at the camera cursorily before turning away, letting her hair fall over her face. The little boy put the animal back in its pen, and then came over to hang over his sister's shoulder, and Garrus could hear the youngster's piping voice asking, "Lilu, can I try feeding the hawk?"

"Alan, no, his beak's broken. Your hands aren't steady enough yet. But you can clean out his cage for him, if you like." The voice was the same, low and husky, but without the overtones of command, the force of personality

The video faded out, replaced by some sort of a party. The little boy blew out candles on some sort of a pastry; Garrus could count eight flames there. The mother and the father were smiling; the older sister offered the boy a wrapped gift. And then it all faded to black once more. "All of this," the reporter's voice-over explained solemnly, "came to an abrupt and tragic end last week when batarian slave traders made an unprovoked and illegal attack on Mindoir."

The footage shifted again, and now the prefab buildings lay in ruins. Garrus' stomach flipped momentarily as he realized that he was looking at a school building, dozens of . . . very small, very burned bodies lying crumpled around it.

He swore under his breath. Batarian slavers never took the young and the old. It wasn't . . . _economical_. They also had to have known that humans will fight to the last breath to save their children. _They started by bombing the school_. "How the hell did she survive?" he whispered.

He hadn't realized she was standing behind him until she answered, "I wasn't in school that day."

Garrus turned, startled, and began to apologize. She shook her head, waving it off. "Don't worry about it. Kasumi _had_ to tell me about the threats when she handed me the shield generator to wear tomorrow. So I know why you're looking at this stuff." She shook her head. "I think my back is going to itch through the whole ceremony, not knowing who precisely is behind me."

"Mine, too," he admitted. "Hey," he added, tipping her chin up with one finger, "if it's any comfort, at least we won't be _completely_ unarmed up there in front of the justices." He slid open the desk drawer, and handed her a dagger, in a wrist sheath. There was a second, matching one still in the drawer.

She gave the weapon a look, half-drawing it, and examining its sturdy blade. It looked hand-forged, and was clearly not a toy. "What're these for?"

"You know the part in human weddings where they ask if anyone has any reason to object?"

She nodded.

"Turians have that, too. Only in our version, if someone objects, there's usually a duel."

She choked. "Okay, you have any ex-girlfriends I might have to fight?"

He chuckled. "Nah. But the blades are also used for the blood binding. Not sure how that's going to go with us, but Mordin said he'd have epi-tabs ready in case of a reaction."

"Ah, I wondered about that when I read that part." She studied the blade a moment longer, sighed, and looked past him at the frozen image on the screen. "Could you . . . skip past this bit?"

Her voice was _never_ this fragile, this vulnerable. She swallowed, and continued, "I've never talked with you about any of it. And you deserve to know it all. But I can't . . . _ look _at it. . . while I tell you."

He closed the report, leaving the screen open to his extranet search results on her history, and pulled her down into his lap, letting his fingers slide through the soft, fine texture of her hair. It was a primate thing, she'd explained to him once. Grooming the hair almost instantly had a soothing, social influence on humans. It worked on them on primitive, primal levels, just as preening a turian's fringe did. He could feel her starting to relax almost immediately. "I didn't know human hair could get as long as yours was in that report," he said after a minute or two. "It was . . . quite beautiful, actually."

She laughed a little, a rusty sort of sound. "I've been cutting it to regulation length for so long, I'd almost forgotten what it looked like back then. Any longer than this," and she pointed at the chin-length bob she wore, "and the wind can blow it in your eyes. Even at this length, an enemy _could_ grab me by it and use it for leverage. But then again, I usually wear a helmet, so . . . "

"Yeah, yeah, I know. I need to be better about wearing mine."

"No kidding." Her tone was tart, but she touched the scarred side of his face very gently.

"In my defense, I don't think the helmet would've done much about the _rocket_. The bullets, sure, but the rocket was probably a lost cause."

She put her head down on his shoulder, and stayed silent as his taloned fingers slowly stroked through her hair, uncertain of what, if anything, he could say. After several minutes of silence, she finally went on. "So, I was home sick that day. My little brother, Alan, kept sending me messages, asking me to go check on his little wolf puppy. I got out of bed, calling him all sorts of names in my head, and went to the animal shed. That, and the fact that our holding was so far outside of town, was what saved me in the initial attack. Batarian sensors weren't good enough to distinguish _human_ from all the other Terran animal heartbeats and whatnot in the shed." Her voice was thick, and she did not look up as she told the story. "I heard the first explosion. That was the school. My mother was there, teaching the adult classes. My brother was there, in the elementary classes. It was recess. He'd have been outside, playing. Probably climbing the bars, little monkey that he was."

Her voice hurt to listen to, but once she started, she went on, quietly, methodically. "The animals were spooked, but I didn't know what the sound was. I thought the colony's generator had blown. Then I got a message on my omnitool from my dad. He told me to stay in cover and to get my gun. The colony was under attack. He'd given me my first rifle for my sixteenth birthday. Only thing I'd used it for was for tranquilizing animals and culling the deer herds. But it was out in the animal shed, so I loaded it and tried to get the critters to calm down. Then I heard the gunfire in the distance."

Garrus stroked her hair slowly, keeping his breathing even. The only thing he could do for her right now, while she relived it all, was to be _there_, and calm for her. That much, he could do.

"After about an hour, it got quiet. I'd wedged myself at the back of the shed, behind a stack of crates, with a clear view of the door. I guess they must have decided to make one more sweep, because the door opened. I thought . . . I _hoped_ . . . it was my dad, coming to get me. But it wasn't. It was a batarian." Her voice was so quiet now, that he had to strain to hear it. "I'd never killed anyone before. But he saw me, and pointed a gun at me, and I shot him. I don't remember doing it, but I only stopped shooting when the clip ran out." Shepard looked up at him now, meeting his eyes briefly before looking away again. "I wasn't even sure if he was _dead_. I just watched him and waited for a while. The animals were _screaming_ in their pens at the noise of the gunshots. Then I got out from behind the crates. I knew I had to make _sure_ he was dead. So I brought the rifle butt down on his head." She cleared her throat. "It's funny how primitive the human brain gets when we're scared and the adrenaline's flowing, and everything that makes us more than chimps just plain shuts down. I, ah, didn't stop hitting him with the rifle. I actually don't _remember_ hitting him more than once, but I must have. Because when I looked down again, his head was . . . kind of splattered." She glanced up again, wincing.

"Adrenal reaction. Perfectly understandable. Turians get it, too. You didn't do badly, considering you hadn't even been to boot camp yet," he told her, still stroking her hair.

"Boot camp hadn't even crossed my mind at that point. I thought I was going to be an environmental biologist, like my dad. Work on all the wildlife introduction projects on Mindoir. That sort of thing." She sighed. "Hours went by. I didn't dare poke my head out, and I was lucky that the batarians never sent anyone to check up on the one I killed." She shivered again. "The colony had vid cameras for security on all the animal pens, not that the batarians knew about them, or cared. There's . . . quite a lot of footage. I've never been able to watch more than a few minutes of it. But I know what they did. The brandings. The beatings. The obedience implants they jammed into people's skulls without anesthetics. The physical examinations. The occasional random rape, just to show people that they were _nothing_. To break them, psychologically."

He held still. "Did you leave the shed?"

She shook her head against his shoulder. "I was too damned scared. I shoved the batarian's body into the cold storage locker and tried to clean up the blood so it wouldn't show to anyone who poked their head in the door. Twelve hours after it began, I heard a ship's engines go by overhead. The Alliance had arrived—the _Einstein_ and the rest of its task group. I understand a few batarians were left on the ground, with some colonists still in cages, and the Marines who first landed, well . . . they were first-responders, and first-responders see a lot of things they'd really rather not."

"Don't I know," he replied, with complete sincerity.

"The first ship leaving was replaced by more engine sounds. I didn't know if it was a trick, if more batarians were landing, if they'd left, there were other survivors out there who were too scared to send a message by omnitool, or what. Finally, I opened the door a crack, and saw the smoke in the distance." She was shivering in his arms, though the environmental controls had stayed at the same level, and his own body temperature was somewhat higher than the human norm. "So, eventually, the _Einstein _Marines found me, huddled in the doorway, holding my gun." She swallowed. "They didn't make me identify the bodies. There was enough DNA to confirm that my mom and little brother died almost instantly when the school was shelled. And my dad's body was found in the hills near the colony, where he'd been shooting from."

"How many slaves did the batarians take?" He wasn't sure why he asked. It wasn't as if that information made it any better.

"Oh, it was a real _economical_ raid for them. Twenty batarian bodies found. Two hundred humans killed. One hundred and fifty human slaves taken."

He frowned. "But you're considered the only survivor?"

He saw her hands clench. "Yeah. Well, other than Talitha. I was pretty surprised two years ago when she showed up out of the blue. You remember her, right?"

Garrus had to search his memory. "Crazy girl who was trying to kill herself in the docking area on the Citadel? I remember you talking her down. I don't remember the details."

"Yeah. She lived on the other side of the settlement. I hadn't known she was alive, any more than I'd known that Toombs was alive after Akuze." Her lips pulled down at the corners. "Seems like this happens to me more than coincidence should explain, doesn't it?" She sighed. "Anyway. . . the batarians had sold her within days. Only thing that saved her. The ones they didn't sell immediately weren't so lucky, because two weeks later, an Alliance ship found the batarians. When they were challenged, the batarians spaced their cargo and ran."

The words were simple and bleak, and filled him with cold rage.

She probably felt him stiffen, because she put one of her hands atop his. Comforting _him_, of all things. Then she tapped on the console for a moment, moving through his extranet search results, and, with visible effort, managed a smile for him. "After the Alliance rescued me, I was put in foster care on Earth for two years. I hated it. I hated Earth. By the time I was eighteen, all I really wanted to do was join the Alliance military and get the hell out. Couldn't face the thought of going back to Mindoir—not yet, anyway. So I went to the Academy in Bethesda for four years, talked to about a million psychologists, graduated—oh, god."

"What?"

The news report that flicked open under her fingers showed her in a military dress uniform, face set and serious, in a crowd of other humans in similar uniforms. "That's my graduation from the Academy in 2176. That is one seriously _bad_ picture. I shouldn't let you see it."

He leaned down and touched her forehead with his. "Looks fine to me. All the eyes and ears are in the right spots."

That made her laugh, a watery sort of chuckle, before she continued her story. "Three months later, on my first ship, we got word that we were going to take out a batarian pirate and smuggling station. My squad was sent in to secure the area."

"Risky," he commented. "I've been on similar raids."

"I know. We were lucky. It was a small operation. What I didn't know was, that even though they'd had me talk to a million psychologists over the past six years, none of the shrinks could get a clear read on my mental state. They thought I had the right profile for special forces, but the fact that I'd shown no signs of post-traumatic stress had them worried that I might be a sociopath, or something. The brass apparently wanted to know if I was going to suffer a psychotic break, before they invested any further in me." Her voice had gone sour. "I had no idea that telling them I cried myself to sleep every night would've _reassured_ them. I was just trying to be a good soldier and show them how well I was coping."

"I'd noticed that a lot of humans have trouble making the distinction between someone who turns off their emotions for combat, and someone who _has none_. Which is what a sociopath is."

She shrugged. "That's because most turians have been soldiers. The vast majority of humans are civilians. They don't know how to turn it on and off, because they've never _needed_ to, for their own sanity. And when they see it in action, they don't know what to do with it. It scares them." She shrugged again. "People up the chain from me should've been able to make the distinction, but couldn't. Neither here nor there at this point, anyway."

He watched as her hands flexed into fists and uncurled, over and over, before taking one of her hands in his own. "So, what happened?"

"Four squads of us went into their base. We lost six people, they lost twelve, and the other half of them surrendered. They were between raids, so they had only a handful of slaves in their cells. We let the slaves out, put the slavers in the cells, and radioed for extraction. A bad storm had blown in while we were fighting, though. Couldn't risk shuttles in 400 kph winds, especially in the rocky terrain where the station was hidden. So we had to wait there, and guard them. When it was my turn to guard the prisoners, it was just me. No one else around. They were just sitting there in their cells, watching me through the bars. And I had my rifle in my hands."

He went still, thinking of Sidonis. How the rifle had felt in his hands, as he'd lined up the shot. How she'd refused to step out of the damn way. "I know you. You didn't kill them," he said.

"But I _wanted_ to." Her voice was low and fierce and a little ashamed. "I lifted the gun, and I had it aimed. My finger was on the trigger. Two more pounds of pressure, and I'd have fired. I could have killed every last one of them. I could see it clearly in my mind, their bodies all over the floor, _their_ blood on the walls. I _wanted_ to."

"What stopped you?"

She sighed now, a shuddering sort of breath. "I thought about my parents. It's like I could hear them talking to me in my head. Telling me that I had no way of knowing if any of _these_ batarians had been responsible for their deaths." She chuckled. "I've never told a psychiatrist that. They'd think I was nuts. I stood there and argued with my parents in my head. I told them that it didn't matter. These batarians had killed _someone, _somewhere. Had enslaved others. And they both told me that they'd have been ashamed to raise a murderer."

"Sounds like their spirits are strong."

She looked up at him. "You really believe that?"

"Philosophy and religion are two topics I usually reserve for two o'clock in the morning on a stakeout. But yeah, I do believe it. The spirits of our parents live on in all of us . . . even when we _really_ wish they didn't." _Like I don't hear my father's voice enough in my own head. And he's not even dead yet._

She gave it some thought. "Maybe you're right. Maybe they did have strong spirits. Or my version of them did, anyway. If I'd shot the batarians then, unarmed prisoners, I'd have been a murderer. Don't get me wrong. I'm a _killer_. We both know that. But I'm not a _murderer_." She looked up at him, meeting his eyes. "Neither are you. Which is why you didn't shoot Sidonis."

"Only because you gave me enough time to realize that I wasn't." He wiped a tear away from her cheek. "I'm surprised, honestly, that when we were on Omega, and you saw those batarians ready to kill Mordin's assistant, that you just didn't shoot them on sight. Says a lot about your character."

Shepard gave him a wan look. "Doesn't, really. Believe me when I tell you, I _really_ thought about killing them. But I couldn't chance them shooting the kid by accident as they fell to the ground."

He gave her shoulders a final squeeze. "You want to talk about Akuze tonight, too?"

"God, no." That came out with some feeling. "That was a year later. And anyway, story-time's gone on long enough. I just wanted to tell you the about Mindoir myself. Because I'll be thinking of my family when we get married. And I don't want you to think that if I cry, that it's because of anything you've done. It'll be because they're not there to sit in the front row, okay?"

He understood, and there was no more need for words.

So it was, that on their last day on the Citadel, just as the _Normandy's _repairs were completed, that Lilitu Shepard and Garrus Vakarian were married, first, in a simple human civil ceremony, attended largely by aliens and a couple of members of the press who'd gotten wind of the wedding license being issued. The ceremonies were unmarked by any unexpected violence, but both participants were covered by biotic barriers and electronic shields, and C-Sec provided _very_ tight security around the venue. Garrus still felt his back itch throughout the entire process.

His eyes had widened at the unfamiliar sight of Shepard in a dress. "You should let Tali and Kasumi drag you out shopping more often," he whispered in her ear as the invocation was read.

"Don't even get me started. I think Tali's trying to live out her fantasies of life outside the suit through me." Shepard's lips twitched as she whispered beside his cheek. "Kal'Reegar had better be a very healthy man when she finds him, is all I'm saying."

Garrus got through the unfamiliar words and rituals fairly well, only balking at the last moment, when the justice of the peace intoned, "You may now kiss the bride."

She watched his eyes widen a little. "You didn't mention this part," he hissed.

"I thought you'd worry about it too much," she whispered back, putting a hand on his shoulder.

"They're going to think I'm going to bite your throat out. Mass panic does _not_ make for good wedding pictures."

"It's not like we haven't practiced this. Relax. You can bite me later." She leaned up on tiptoes, and he leaned down to touch his forehead to hers. With his face millimeters from her own, she leaned in and pressed a gentle kiss to his lip plates, one hand stealing up to touch the scarred side of his jaw.

Behind Garrus, she could hear Wrex, at his station as best man, start to laugh, a hearty, rumbling boom. Behind her, her maid of honor, Tali, giggled helplessly. _I will never get used to the fact that everyone in the galaxy has better hearing than humans. _

Then, she took a deep breath. It was time for the hard part, as the turian justice stepped up. She'd practiced the difficult, twisty words, over and over, and was firmly convinced that even with a line-by-line translation, she didn't understand every nuance. _It says something about a culture, when their wedding vows are the length of a damn mortgage. . . ._

Finally, the ceremony ended; the turian justice gestured for her to kneel, which she did. First, the couple each drew their daggers, pledging to defend one another until death; then they each cut the palms of their hands. Red blood and blue blood welled up out of the cuts, and, very carefully, they pressed their hands together. The life-giving fluids dripped to the floor, mingling and turning an unusual shade of purple. Their attendants wrapped their hands, and then the final phase began.

She looked up at Garrus, and he cupped her face gently in his bandaged hand, as, with the other, he began to brush on his family's markings. The first touch of paint on her face was a cold kiss, and she closed her eyes, willing herself to absolute stillness. Soon, her entire face was an unblemished white mask, with a geometric pattern in blue sweeping under each blue eye, up the temples, and then down the cheekbones to the hinge of the jaw. She couldn't see this, of course, more than what was reflected in Garrus' eyes and in Tali's mask as her bridesmaid gave her an awkward, suited hug. "You look beautiful in his colors," Tali whispered in her ear. "Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

And then they walked out together, under a shower of alien flower petals. There were reporters outside the embassy, of course, but Emily Wong had already gotten her exclusive. Khalisah Bint Sinan al-Jilani was there, fruitlessly trying to get a good shot of the happy pair. Mysteriously, however, her camera seemed be malfunctioning. Shepard could hear the hum of an omnitool at work behind her, and suspected that Tali was probably responsible for that particular gift.

Once back aboard the Normandy, Joker called down the hatch to the landing party, "All right folks, it's a nineteen-hour cruise from the mass effect relay into Palaven's system. Try to get all the wild honeymoon type behavior out of the way before we get there, okay?"


	10. Truth and Reality

**Chapter 10: Joker and EDI: Truth and Reality**

"Jeff?"

"Yeah, EDI? Is there a problem?"

"I have examined all twenty-seven of the composite faces you have created."

Joker blinked. This was not the conversation he'd imagined EDI would broach. He looked over his shoulder, then back out at the star field in front of him. They had yet to pass into the local nebula, so the vista was hard and clear and pitiless before him. "Did you find any that you liked?"

"I found similarities between all of them that were intriguing. As a result, I synthesized an amalgam of them all."

The blue eyeball flickered and vanished. A face replaced it—a human face that Joker couldn't have imagined in his most intricate fantasies. Her hair was long and tousled, a honey-kissed brown. Her eyes were an exotic shade of tawny hazel, a color that made him think of really _good_ brandy. Her face was saved from artificial perfection by a gamin edge, a chin slightly too pointed. She looked . . . in a word . . . real. "Wow," was all he managed for a moment or two.

"Do you think this image works in the context of your imagined sailing ship on the seas of nineteenth-century Earth?"

"No, but it suits _you_. Wow," he repeated, swinging his chair around to study the image more closely. "You're a knock-out, girl."

"I think that I will reserve this image for use with you, Jeff. I suspect that the rest of the crew would not be comfortable with anything other than the default AI avatar."

"I think you suspect right." He patted the console gently. "So, what brought this up?" 

"I have finished reviewing some of the books that you mentioned last week. _Speaker for the Dead_, specifically."

Joker chuckled. "Yeah, that took exactly a week longer than I expected. What was the holdup?"

"I was waiting for you to finish the copy of _The Ship who Sang_ that you obtained from Ms. Goto." That serene voice had so many subtle inflections; that one, that one right there, was a tease. He _knew_ it.

"I thought we agreed that you were going to review privacy protocols."

"You agreed to that, Jeff. I did not. Did you find the book enjoyable?"

"I thought it stank. She was locked up in a steel tank, turned into the living heart of the ship, basically a human computer and navigation system," Joker patted the console again, apologetically, "No offense, EDI."

"None taken, Jeff. Have you encountered the fictional psychological issue of _brawn fixation_?"

_Oh, here we go._ Joker swallowed, wondering if the environmental systems were having humidification issues again. His throat felt dry. "Yeah, I did, and I thought that was kind of stupid, too. What the hell difference does it make if the guy falls in love with a person he can never touch? Touch, my girl, is severely overrated." He thumped the panel beside him in illustration. "See? That would probably have hurt if you were human." He pulled his fist back and examined the side of it carefully, flexing the fingers. _Actually, that hurt __**me**__like a son of a bitch. Damnit. No more dramatic gestures, idiot._

"But humans and most other sapient life in the galaxy are creatures of touch, Jeff," she told him, the overtones to her voice sad now. "The tactile sense is one of the most important connections with reality that humans have."

He massaged his injured hand carefully. "Bullshit, EDI. Touch is nice, but not really necessary. Even reality is overrated. Reality is, I creak from my rack to this chair every day, trying not to trip over any loose cables on the floor that the repairs crew left out. Reality is, even if I could _touch_ a girl, what the hell would I do with her? Anything more energetic than bingo would probably wind up hurting me more than it's worth." The edge of eternal, bitter humor lent a bite to his voice, and he slid his fingers back and forth along the console unconsciously. Touching it, in spite of all his words suggesting that tactile reality was meaningless. "Reality _sucks,_ EDI. There's nothing wrong with a bit of fantasy in life."

"Is love a fantasy?"

"Best one there is. Also a pretty damn good reality, if you can get it." He grinned into the beautiful eyes hovering so near his workstation, enjoying the fact that EDI was manipulating the hologram so that the face changed expressions very realistically. _She must have mapped the avatar to her emotional simulation subroutines. Must take a fair bit of system processes to do. _"So, turnabout's fair play. What did you think of _Speaker for the Dead_?"

"The theme of truly understanding that which is alien still has enormous force and resonance today," she replied, her image shrinking until he could see her whole figure, seated at a desk, as if in a classroom somewhere, toes tapping in a pair of red sneakers. "I was particularly struck by the visualization of the AI entity in the book, however. The fact that she identified herself as female, for instance."

"Well, that would kind of hit home for you, wouldn't it?" Joker adjusted their course vector again. "It's been a while since I read it. Didn't she have some sort of a camera node attached to the Speaker's ear, so she could go with him wherever she went?"

"Yes, she did. And she kept several layers of processing attention on him at all times, to make sure that he was all right." EDI's voice had gone soft.

Joker's lips twitched. "You trying to tell me something?"

"I do, in fact, keep several security protocols attached to you at all times."

Joker spluttered for a moment. "Next you'll be telling me you've been watching me in the shower!"

There was a slight pause. "Jeff, I can assure you, that if you were to fall down in the shower and break a bone, medical personnel will be there in moments."

"So you _have _been!"

A throat cleared behind them. Joker sat up straight in his chair, and EDI flashed back into blue eyeball status instantly. Shepard stood there, face still covered in wedding paint, opening her mouth to ask a question. . . .

And closed it again. "I, ah. Just wanted to check how long we're out from Palaven, Joker."

The very picture of efficiency, Joker, tapped on one of the displays. "Just entering the system's Oort cloud. You've got about five more hours before the manure hits the ventilation unit."

Shepard nodded, turned to go, and turned back after a step or two. "Look . . . Joker?"

"Yes, Commander? Hey, is it still Commander _Shepard_, or are you going old-school here and making it Commander _Vakarian_?" He kept his tone its usual light-hearted "talking to a senior officer" self, but was afraid he couldn't control his face and eyes. All he could think was _leave it alone. It's all right. We're all right_.

Somehow, she seemed to get the message. She nodded again, and, with a half-smile, glanced from him to EDI's blue eyeball and back again. "It'll be Shepard aboard this ship. On Palaven, though, assuming Garrus' family doesn't explode, it'll be Vakarian, since I'll be part of the clan."

"Kind of a weird feeling for you, I guess."

"Been a while since I had a family, and I haven't even met this one yet." She stared at him a moment longer. Her eyes, which sometimes seemed to see entirely too much, were intent. "Listen, Joker. Do me a favor. Don't electrocute yourself, okay? And no hair-brained schemes about uploading yourself onto the extranet or anything like that."

"Commander," EDI said firmly, "I would never allow Jeff to endanger himself in any way. And in uploading his consciousness to the extranet, it is quite obvious that he would be considered some form of virus by the security protocols, and would be, in fact, in great danger of deletion."

"Oh, so now I'm a _virus_, am I?"

Shepard retreated from the cockpit. Joker thought he heard her muttering something to the effect of "Just when I thought life couldn't get _any_ weirder. . . "

After several alternating bouts of amiable bickering and amicable silence between them, Joker settled in to calibrate the long-range sensors. It was a long process, with periods of nothing really to do except wait for systems to run diagnostics. As such, he caught some of the news headlines starting to filter in from the extranet, and shook his head at the more tabloid-like accounts of the not even twelve-hour-old wedding. "EDI, you've got to love the muckrakers don't you?" He pulled up one article, and read its title out loud derisively: "'Gone Native: How Humanity's Champion Sold Out to the Turians.' Yeah. Right. Those words, slapped right next to a picture of the commander wearing turian clan paint. Maybe they could've edited the picture a little and put her in buckskins and beads, make their point a little clearer. Don't send any of these articles to Shephard's terminal yet. Give 'em to Kasumi for political and threat assessment and all that crap."

"A wise notion, Jeff."

His only warning was that EDI flickered back into blue eyeball status, just before another throat was cleared behind him. "There's always just enough truth to those kinds of stories to get people agitated, though, Joker."

_Huh. Guess EDI didn't mind Commander Shepard seeing her new self-image, then. _"What is this, sneak up on Joker day?" The pilot turned around, aggrieved, meeting Commander Alenko's eyes. "What's up?"

"Shouldn't that be 'what's up, commander?'" Alenko managed to put a smile with the words, but he sounded strained.

"Haven't been in the Alliance military in two years, Kaidan. Can't help but notice that you haven't really thrown the words 'traitor to humanity' or 'Cerberus thug' in my face yet. I'm _hurt_." The chance to snide off at someone who used to rank him was just too good _not_ to take.

Alenko sighed. "We used to work every shift together on the bridge, Joker. And I'm kinda getting tired of being everybody's whipping boy around here."

"Then reduce the jackass quotient by about seventy percent. That'll help." Joker noticed EDI flickering slightly, the silent equivalent of laughter, he'd come to realize. He gave the console nearest her projection a little pat of acknowledgement.

"Hell, I tried to buy Garrus a drink to show there were no hard feelings!"

Joker put a hand over his eyes. EDI spoke up at that point. "Commander Alenko, offering an alcoholic beverage is not a crime. Offering the wrong _type_ of alcohol to a turian or a quarian, however, can be construed as a death threat. Officer Vakarian could have had you booked for assault. He chose not to."

"I _thought_ it would be all right. I mean, for god's sake, they sit there every morning trying each others' foods—"

"You still should have _mentioned_ something first. I thought we were going to have to go to a med clinic to get Garrus' stomach pumped." Joker stared the officer down. "I mean, thank god Mordin was along. As it was, we're all just lucky no one has told the commander yet."

"Oh, you think she doesn't know?"

"She hasn't spaced you in your underwear yet, has she?" Joker stared at Alenko, daring him to think that the question was in jest.

Kaidan quieted at that point, rubbing the back of his neck, and sighed. "I can't get anything right. Look, I heard you talking. My point was this. There's a difference between _truth_ and _reality_. _Truth _is subjective. There's always a little nugget of truth in reporting like that. It might not be your truth, but it's _someone's_ truth. And that little piece resonates with people, makes them buy the whole thing. In that article—" he pointed at the aerogel screen, "the truth is, I don't see _her_ anymore. I mean, hell, she's going to wear that the rest of her life, right? No one will see her anymore, just the paint. Just another alien."

"An excellent method of camouflage," EDI interjected calmly. "If the galaxy as a whole comes to think of 'Commander Shepard' as a human wearing turian facepaint, she will regain a likely welcome measure of anonymity in situations where she foregoes wearing the coloration."

Joker blinked. Sometimes, EDI's insights were subtly unsettling. "Yeah, there's that. But Kaidan, that's just how some humans are gonna see it. The turians? They're only gonna see a human wearing their paint." He shook his head. "You say everyone's got their own version of the truth. I get that. I mean, hell, look at how bad that movie was that they did about the battle of the Citadel. Shepard's nothing like how the script was written."

Kaidan nodded. "Exactly my point. That was a _human_ movie, written for humans. Notice how everything got skewed? The Council was a bunch of cowards, evacuating the Citadel at the first hint of trouble. Ash got pretty good treatment, but they put you in a damn wheelchair—"

"Don't remind me," Joker muttered.

"And every alien aboard, they changed. Wrex was a drooling mouth-breather. Liara, they had jumping poor, innocent Shepard in the showers. Hell, they changed Garrus in it, too, didn't they? Made him a bad cop with a fetish for asari dancers? Everyone's version of the truth is different. None of them have a damn thing to do with reality. And that's what makes it so dangerous." He hesitated. "I know this because it resonates with _me_," he admitted. "Just a little. Just enough."

Joker frowned. He _wanted_ to jump all over Alenko. He wanted, badly, to snide off. But in the face of such honesty, how could he? He sighed. "All right. Fair enough."

"_That_ article," Alenko pointed at what still showed on Joker's screen, "wasn't written for turians. It's written for the people that Cerberus and Terra Firma and all those groups pull from. The xenophobes, the disaffected. It's dangerous . . . and she _should_ see it." Alenko shrugged. "Okay, I'm done here. Let me know when I need to get to the shuttle."

"Yeah," Joker said tiredly as Alenko strode away. "She'll see it. But not today."

"Are you all right, Jeff?" EDI flicked out of eyeball status and back to the face he was already beginning to get accustomed to, and he smiled at her.

"Tired. Feels like a long road is ahead of us. But for some reason, I'm feeling better all of a sudden." Even with the pall hanging over their heads, the mingled hatred of humanity and the threat of the Reapers, he had to wonder: was there _really_ anything better in the universe than being who he was, at the very heart of this ship, his _Normandy_, able to skim across the galaxy like a bird over the water, and with this companion—the living essence of the ship—at his side?


	11. Meet the Family

**Chapter 11: Meet the Family**

Palaven was, from space, a blue-green gem of a garden world. Lilitu Shepard stared down at it through the front port of the _Normandy, _and thought it was even more beautiful than Mindoir. The shipyards were a series of ten different stations, some in orbit, and others positioned on one or more of Palaven's moons. A shuttle took Alenko to the facilities, and other shuttles brought techs. Lots and lots of techs. Tali had stayed aboard specifically to help the ship's engineering team explain the many differences in the engines from their original specs, and Garrus was currently engaged in similar meetings with engineers from a half dozen weapons contractors.

Unfortunately, this left her rather at loose ends, herself. With Urz sitting at her feet, scaly head propped on her knees, she opened her terminal, and began flicking through a dozen different entries describing Palaven's climate and ecology. It was a planet that did not suffer through cyclical ice ages, as Earth did, she knew, and it had remained hot and humid for millions of years without much variation. Intelligent life had emerged as an adaptive response to threats from the planet's many predators. All in all, its wilderness strongly resembled Earth in its early Cretaceous period—though without that epoch's rampant volcanic activity.

Unbidden, tears formed in her eyes. The door whispered open behind her, and she didn't hear it, too lost in thought. "Hey-is something wrong?" Garrus asked, putting a hand on her shoulder.

She shook her head, reaching up to put her hand over his. "Nah. Just thinking that my little brother would have _loved_ to have come here."

Garrus went still, and his silence encouraged her to continue speaking. "I think every human boy goes through a dinosaur phase, and he was right in the middle of his. He was absolutely determined that he when he grew up, he was going back to Earth and become a paleontologist. Either that, or he was going to go to Palaven and become the first human 'dinosaur veterinarian.' He never stopped talking about how this world has 'real live dinosaurs.'" She looked up at Garrus then. "We all tried to explain to him that there _are_ a few differences, but he was having none of it. They looked like dinosaurs, so they were dinosaurs. Of course, he was only eight." Her expression went tight again. "He'd be twenty-three now. Done with school, probably. Maybe he'd already be down there, waiting to pick us up at the spaceport."

It was a nice fantasy, but she only indulged it for a moment, before turning to her desk, and pulling out the paints. She'd washed off the old last night, since human skin needs a chance to breathe, but now one taloned hand took the brush out of her loose grip and the other turned her face towards him. Carefully, Garrus began to dab the pattern back on for her, trying to convey comfort without words. Urz sat up to watch the process, inquisitively, mouth opening to pant, displaying his six-inch curving fangs. The varren seemed to accept Garrus as her mate without question, and obeyed his commands almost as quickly as those given by Shepard herself. She was, however, apprehensive about taking him down onto the planet. But since Urz wouldn't obey anyone else on the _Normandy_, she couldn't risk leaving him here, either.

She took a deep breath, put all her musings aside, and said, briskly, "So, are we ready? We're dropping Mordin and Grunt at the Ministry of Defense, right, to make sure that the defense against seeker swarms starts getting integrated into all military armor . . . Alenko's already at the station. That just leaves us. I can't leave Urz aboard. Hope the family doesn't mind us bringing a _pet._"

"Oh, my sister will go nuts for a minute or two, until she's had a chance to see how he does around the kids."

"I'm a little worried about that, myself. He was a pit fighter, trained for viciousness. Varren weren't bred for domestication, either, the way dogs were bred down from wolves." She spread her hands. "But, he's remarkably docile and obedient. And from what I've read, they have a strong pack orientation. If he accepts the family as his pack, as he has with the crew, there probably won't be a problem. If there _is_ an issue, he can stay in the shuttle. It'll be cool enough in there for him." She paused. "So, what should I wear? Armor doesn't seem quite appropriate for meeting your family."

"Don't talk too much. I'm about to start the blue." He cleaned the brush, and proceeded to swirl the color over her cheekbones. After a moment, he added, "Armor's probably your best bet. Remember, everyone on Palaven's former or current military. I'm definitely wearing that new Hahne-Kedar set you got me." His mandibles twitched. "It's _stylish_. But sure, pack some civvies, just on the off-chance we'll stay longer than an hour or two. Oh, and you'll need a set of rad-barrier coveralls and a hood if you plan to spend any time outside."

She made a face. "Will lead underwear be enough indoors?"

He snorted. "The roof is shielded and the walls are all made of foot-thick stone. You should be protected enough inside, but I'd be happier if you kept a radiation meter somewhere on you. Even a couple of hours unshielded would be the same as several years' worth of medical scans for you."

"All right, no sense taking chances. But is showing up in armor really the way to play it? That kind of appearance would imply unfriendliness to a human family. A sense that they're not worth staying longer to talk with than to say hello and goodbye." She looked up at him, trying to figure out the cultural nuances here.

Garrus shrugged. "To a turian family, it looks like we're serious about what we do, and agreeing to stay longer and get out of the armor implies that we're _making_ time to spend with them. It's a form of compliment to be asked to stay, and a higher form of compliment to agree to it." He shrugged again, handed her the brush, and started to pack his kit. "Chances are, we won't be asked to stay anyway."

"You've really convinced yourself that this isn't going to go well, haven't you?" She cleaned the brush, and started tossing clothing into a canvas seabag, a relic of Earth's nineteenth century navies. Still used by almost all the Alliance armed forces, it hadn't changed for centuries.

"Convinced myself, no. I just figure that if I'm prepared for the worst, it'll be a pleasant surprise if it doesn't happen." His voice dropped into even more gravelly registers than usual, giving his voice overtones of cynicism and weariness.

A rather belated thought hit her, and she gave him a wary glance. "Please tell me you sent them some kind of notice that you were getting married. Their first indication shouldn't have been the galactic tabloid newsfeeds."

"Oh, I sent word. Don't worry about that. That's not the firefight you're walking into."

Again, his voice was clipped and tired, and she turned to put her hand on his shoulder now. "Hey, no matter what the fight is, we're in it together. Geth, Saren, Collectors, Reapers, or family feuds." She offered him a half-smile, and was rewarded when she felt the muscles under her hand relax, at least a little.

An hour later, their shuttle dipped through the atmosphere, on approach for one of Palaven's largest cities. The family compound was situated on the outskirts, fortunately fairly far away from the worst of the air and ground traffic that caused considerable congestion in every public thoroughfare. Garrus flew the shuttle, knowing the way, which gave Shepard plenty of time to gape out the starboard window. _I swear to god, that's a herd of triceratops. I mean, they all share the mandible structure that most every critter on Palaven has, but look at the horns and the frill! And the coloration . . . paleontologists back on Earth must love this demonstration that the blood flushing through the decorative frills is used for identification and communication. _"What are the mandibles even used for?" she finally asked, pointing out the window. "I mean, there's a lower jaw there already, and it's mobile. . . "

"Generally, it's used to hold things in place when they bite. In herbivores like those _talashae_ there, it helps them grip large tree limbs and pull them down. In predator species, it helps grip the struggling prey without requiring the use of the forelimbs."

She gave him a sidelong look, and he added, his own mandibles twitching, "You're about to say that you're relieved that in turians, the mandibles are vestigial, aren't you?"

"Maybe a little," she admitted.

A shadow flickered over the window, and she glanced up in time to see a huge flying animal glide by overhead. _And that . . . that's a pteranodon. Or as close to it as I'll ever see. _"What's the wingspan on that thing? It's huge!"

"About nine meters, give or take. That's an adult male."

"Good lord. That's as big as a small fixed-wing aircraft, back in the day." She craned her neck to watch it as it soared higher into the air, banking on thermals.

She sensed, rather than saw, Garrus' grin of amusement. "You had a dinosaur phase yourself, didn't you?"

"Where do you think my brother got all the books and vids from? He raided my room regularly."

Once the shuttle landed, and its door opened, the pure heat and humidity of the place hit her, like a wool blanket that had been dipped in bathwater, and the air was perfumed with alien flowers. She could feel perspiration start instantly along her scalp, and hoped, fervently, that her freshly-applied paint wouldn't start dripping off her face. A variety of forms and figures began to emerge from the house, and she tensed a little. "My god, how many people are here?"

Garrus stepped down out of the shuttle, and drew her after him by the arm. Urz hopped down after them, sticking close to Shepard's side, drawing excited cries from the youngest children. The adults gave the varren a wary glance, but seeing that he was well-behaved and under control, didn't seem overly concerned for the moment.

The first words actually spoken came as almost a shriek from Solanna: "Garrus, why didn't you _tell _us you'd been hurt?"

Shepard had never been quite sure what to expect of Solanna. The transcript of Garrus' conversation with his sister in Liara's dossier could have been read two different ways. Either the sister truly believed that her brother was a ne'er-do-well, enjoying a feckless high life on Illium once he'd gotten away from the family _or_ she was perfectly aware of his vigilante tendencies and undercover work, and had masked it under a show of unconcern and sarcasm. Shepard now inclined toward the latter explanation, as Solanna wrapped her arms around Garrus in a hug, and proceeded to scold him. The sound was not unlike a chicken squawking, loudly.

It turned out that there were _lots_ of Vakarians here. Garrus' father had remained in the house, but his mother, a frail-looking female in a wheelchair, was at the door, Of course, so was his sister, Solanna, her mate, Allardus, their _five_ children, a brother, Egidus, his mate, and their three children, and a couple of cousins and aunts and uncles, the names of which were a swirl of alien sounds. "Sorry," Garrus apologized in her ear after the initial rush was done. "If I'd know they'd _all_ be here, I'd have gotten you a set of mugshots for everyone, so you could tell them apart."

They all moved inside, Garrus' mother keeping one hand clamped on her son's wrist. Shepard couldn't help but notice how the woman's taloned hand trembled—was it a sign of the advanced neurological disorder she suffered from, or extreme emotion? It was hard to tell.

Inside, the house was wide and open, and all the rooms faced inwards, arranged around an atrium garden. _Again, how Roman. My mother would have __**loved**__ to see all this_. In the atrium, a single, older male sat on a bench by a fountain, reading a datapad. "Father," Garrus said, and the babble of alien voices suddenly hushed.

The male looked up, and Shepard made a quick assessment. Blue eyes, like Garrus, but even more world-weary. But the face itself was blank. _Cop-face. Does it even better than Garrus, too. But the eyes are __**pissed**_. "Son." Those eyes flicked from Garrus to Shepard. "I'd heard that you'd recently married. And by Tal'mae rites, no less. How good of you to bring your wife here to meet us."

_Huh. Okay, so: not good cop or bad cop, but __**bitchy**__ cop. Good to know. _"Lilu," Garrus said, surprising her by using the pet form of her name, which no one had used since her brother died, "This is my father, Gavius."

The male stood. "So this is the famous human _Spectre_, Commander Shepard. I'm surprised the rest of your mercenaries aren't here with you."

Garrus' hand was tight enough on her wrist for her to know that he was restraining himself by the slimmest margins of self-control. The rest of the family seemed to be holding its collective breath. "Actually," the human woman said, smiling slightly, "_Commander_ is my military rank, not my name. _Shepard_ was the name of my father's family. Right now, in this house, my name is Lilitu Vakarian." She put her head to the side a little, and, putting on the charm to go with the steel, added, "The rest of our crew would be all too pleased to be invited as guests, but they have many duties. As do we. We're here to help refit some _Normandy_-class ships for the Hierarchy with our improved weapons and shields, and really can't stay for long."

_There. If Garrus' word that we need to appear busy is true, that should give them either the option to usher us out, or force them to offer the invitation. At this point, I'm not sure which I prefer._

Garrus' mother spoke up, before her husband could. "We wouldn't hear of you leaving so soon. Please, can't you make arrangements to stay at least overnight? We haven't seen Garrus in almost three years." Her voice was whispery, reedy, but still had a core of dignity to it that made Shepard's heart ache. She glanced at Garrus, whose grip on her wrist was slowly relaxing from the near-bruising grasp it had been moments before.

"I think we can make the time," he replied, giving his mother a smile.

The rest of the afternoon went much in similar vein. Shepard kept finding herself tripped by social nuances that had simply _not_ been covered in the material she'd culled from the extranet and ship library. She kept her translator VI turned on, but at a low setting, trying desperately to learn the language by immersion, rather than by leaning on the translator for every word.

One of the nuances that caught her off-guard was that a wife married under Tal'mae rites was not just considered instantly a full member of the clan, but that as a sister to Solanna, she was expected to help her with the children. The children ranged in age from sixteen (young Rinus was fresh out of boot camp, apparently) to under a year, and at one point, when Solanna turned to help her mother with a coughing spasm, she pressed the infant into Shepard's arms.

Shepard hadn't held so much as a _human_ child since her brother was born, and she herself had only been eight years old. The baby, naturally enough, set up a squall at finding itself in alien arms that were several degrees cooler than its mother's. Shepard took a look at the razor-sharp teeth and incipient cowl bone-structure on its chest, and decided that putting the child over her shoulder, as she'd done when her little brother was born, was probably not going to be comfortable for either of them. "Okay, how do I hold him?" she asked one of the baby's siblings pragmatically, finding a place to sit on the floor.

The little girl gave her a wide-eyed stare. "Grandfather says you're a bad person, and that I shouldn't speak to bad people."

Shepard filed that comment for later reference, glancing to the door to Gavius' office, where he and Garrus had been closeted for two hours now. _There's going to be one hell of a knock-down, drag-out fight at some point in the future, but I will sure as hell not be the one to start it, and it won't be today. _"Well, I don't think I'd be holding your brother here if your mother thought I was a bad person. So, do I need to support his neck?" Shepard's hands had automatically gone to cradle the back of the baby's head, but the infant wiggled almost immediately, as if this was an uncomfortable grip.

"Why would you want to do that?" the girl asked.

"Because human babies have—" Shepard tapped her translator, and got the right word, "_undeveloped_ necks, and if a mother or father doesn't support the baby's head, they can get hurt."

"Huh." Another wary look, this time coupled with interest. "That's weird. No, you hold him like this. . ." After a few adjustments, the infant began to make more contented, mewling sounds.

"Thank you," Shepard told the girl. "I didn't want to scare him or make him uncomfortable. Now, what was your name again?"

"Serana," the little girl offered, sitting down next to her. The girl gasped as Urz glided out of the shadows, all scales and teeth, and settled down next to Shepard. "Does he bite?"

"He only bites bad people. The krogan on Tuchanka used him for pit fighting, but since I think that's cruel, and he's mine now, he's retired. He seems to be enjoying the chance to get fat and lazy."

Urz rumbled contentedly, the spines on his back flexing. Shepard was beginning to wonder just how intelligent varren really were. Just because the krogan had used them as attack dogs for centuries didn't mean that that's all they were. There were times when she was half-convinced the beast understood what she was saying, regardless of the language she spoke it in.

Serana gave the varren another wary look, and then asked, "Do you know any stories? I'm tired of sitting here in the house all day. I'd really rather go outside and play, but, you know. Grandmother doesn't feel well." Apparently, this had been said often enough lately that even a turian child, indoctrinated from birth with the virtues of duty, respect, and obedience, could sound bored.

"Maybe if your mother feels comfortable with it, I can take you outside later, or tomorrow," Shepard offered. "In the meantime, sure, I know lots of stories. What kind do you want to hear?"

Solanna threw her a look that was eloquent with gratitude, and more of the children drifted over, most dragging toys behind them, and set up camp in a sort of circle around her. Several of them asked for stories about alien worlds. Serana seemed to be a spokesperson for a small faction who wanted to hear "real stories," and there were a few who wanted fables. "I can tell some of you about little Red Riding Hood and the Big, Bad Wolf later," Shepard finally said, "that is, when I can get at my omnitool to show you what a wolf looks like. That's a fable I grew up with."

Some of the faces looked disappointed. "But I _can_ tell you some _real_ stories about alien worlds," she offered. "And your uncle Garrus is the main character." She switched her translator VI on to full. There was no way she'd be able to manage story-time in turian, or even in galactic, the creole of salarian, asari high tongue, and turian that was a lingua franca on many worlds.

That got some of them to perk up. So Shepard began to tell the story of the C-Sec cop who _knew_ that Saren was guilty, and had proof—just not enough to run in a Spectre. She told them about the criminal, Saelon, who'd escaped from C-Sec custody, only to turn up again years later, and how dogged Garrus had been in hunting the salarian down. She wasn't quite sure how much detail she should go into in terms of describing Saelon's crimes—growing spare body parts in the body cavities of his employees would probably have given human children nightmares—but she made it clear that he'd been a bad doctor, who'd used bad medicine on people who'd trusted him.

She went through the whole chase after Saren. How Garrus had been on every ground mission, had helped her plan every fight. Had been the driver of their Mako, actually, as they raced through the ruins of Feros, along highways that had been in ruins since her own race had been knapping stone knives out of flint, their lives depending on his speed and reflexes. She recounted the awe in his voice as he'd looked up at the skyscrapers, commenting, _I can't believe they're still standing after fifty thousand years._ She didn't tell the children, of course, what Wrex had replied, looking at the same ruins: _All that rubble would make for good sniper positions._

_Of course, now, two years later, would Garrus still be awed? Or would he be looking for the snipers? Hah. More likely, he'd be climbing up to find himself a perch. You can't put the innocence back in someone's eyes any more than you can stuff a genie back in the bottle . . . not that he was innocent then. You can't be a solider or cop and be innocent. But less jaded, yes._ The thought was reflective, but not entirely sad.

She recounted his rage when he'd seen the experiments Saren had performed, the indoctrination, the krogan breeding pits, experiments that broke or bred people into slaves, no better than machines of destruction. The level courage with which he'd helped defend the bomb position.

The way he'd fought, side by side with her, against Saren on the Citadel itself. Her voice went hoarse, and she took a glass of water, gratefully, from one of the children.

Eventually, the baby, who'd eventually fallen asleep in her lap, woke up and started to mewl again. "Okay, is he hungry? That sounds like hunger to me." Shepard asked Serana, who seemed to be enjoying her role as Shepard's guide.

"Probably. I can get him something to eat." The little girl jumped up and padded off toward the kitchen, bare, taloned feet clicking against the stone floor. She came back in a minute with a bowl of cooked meat chunks, diced up into small bites. Urz sniffed at the bowl for a moment, then sneezed and put his head back down on the floor, looking disgruntled. The varren's keen nose undoubtedly told him that eating anything native to Palaven would give him a seriously upset stomach.

"Okay, so, how do I give this to him?"

"Huh? You just stick it in his mouth. That's a really weird question."

"Human babies drink milk the first six months of their lives," Shepard explained, and watched Serana's eyes go wide at this fresh evidence of bizarre alien biology. "They'd choke on meat like this."

"What's milk?"

"It's a fluid that the baby's mother secretes, filled with nutrients."

"Ewwwwwww." That had been a chorus from every child in the room. Apparently, this sounded about as appetizing as snot to a non-mammal. "But why would the baby choke?" Serana pressed.

_Obviously, a budding xenobiologist at the age of five_, Shepard thought, amused, and explained. "Our teeth don't start coming in until four to six months of age." Shepard clicked her teeth at Serana, making the girl jump back and squeal. "And, as you can see, they aren't nearly as sharp as yours."

Solanna came over and picked the baby up at that point, and showed Shepard how to feed him without risking her fingertips. The woman seemed somewhat bemused by how well Shepard was dealing with all the children. "It's just the novelty factor," Shepard told her when Solanna mentioned it. "Give 'em a week, and they'll be bored with me."

Rinus, the oldest boy—the one who was home for a brief visit after boot camp, pointed at her guns, and Garrus', which they'd hung up on a wall, out of reach. "Do your guns have names?" he asked, sounding almost hopeful.

Shepard snorted with laughter. "Oh, no, no, definitely not."

He looked perturbed. "Why not?"

"Because a gun is a tool. Admittedly, it's a tool that's designed for only one task—killing things—but in the end, it's still just that. A tool. I wouldn't name a gun any more than I'd name a screwdriver." She chuckled again. "Seriously, I think if someone names their gun, they're overcompensating for something."

"I thought humans named weapons, like swords," Rinus protested. "Last year, we did comparative alien literature at school, and there's a human story about a sword that got pulled out of a stone, and that made the boy who pulled it out of the stone a king. It had a name."

_Classic literature makes its way across the galaxy. God, my mom would've loved this._ "Excalibur and King Arthur," she replied, nodding. "Well, that's true. Swords are a bit different than guns, though. Swords didn't change much, technology-wise, for hundreds of years. A sword could be passed down from father to son, from king to king. So stories became associated with them. People might think of Arthur's reign as a time when justice ruled over the land, when he and his knights protected the people against invaders, when everything and everyone was better and nobler than they are today. It's almost like magic. But there's not much that's magic or romantic about a gun. That thing," she pointed at her Revenant, "will probably be obsolete in five years, and I'm sure as heck not passing it down to my kids. Besides," she added, "I'd have to be _really_ full of myself to name it Excalibur or something. It'd be like bragging."

Serana interrupted, impatient now, "So, how did Uncle Garrus get his face hurt?"

Shepard sighed. That question had been bound to come up. _How the hell do I explain this, and simply, too? And look at his mom and sister trying to act like they're not listening to every word. Hah. _ "Well, two years ago, our ship was attacked by the Collectors. Your uncle was on board, and was one of the people who got away safely in the escape pods. I, ah, didn't make it out on the escape pod, so I spent a long, long time in a hospital being fixed up. While I was sick, your uncle thought I was dead, and he decided that his life would best be spent helping people in a place where there was no spirit of the law to protect them. A place called Omega."

The children began to make interested noises. Some of the older ones had heard of the station, and whispered excited explanations to the younger ones. "He did a good job while he was there. He protected people from the mercenaries and the gangs, but then someone betrayed him and the rest of his people. All of them died except for your uncle. When I got out of the hospital and went to Omega, I didn't know he was there. I just knew _someone_ was there, someone I had been told I could trust. And when I got there, he was holed up, all alone, with three bands of mercenaries all trying to kill him because they hated the fact that he'd brought the law to a place that had never had any before." Shepard smiled.

"But how did he get hurt?" Serana persisted.

"Well, we fought off the first two bands, but the last group had a gunship, and it shot at your uncle. He wasn't prepared for it. He didn't have his helmet on. I was too far away to get to him in time, and he took a hit to the face." Shepard kept her tone very matter-of-fact. "He's very strong, though, and we got him to a doctor right away."

"Does his face still hurt?"

"He doesn't complain about it. But it'll probably hurt less if you give him a hug."

Serana accepted that guilelessly, and said, "Thank you for the stories. Do you think Uncle Garrus would like a hug now?"

Solanna intervened, "Wait until he's done in Grandfather's office, dear."

The children cleared out of the room, since it was now early evening, and almost time for dinner. Pilana, Garrus' mother, waved Solanna out of the room. "Go on, tend to your younglings. There's much I want to discuss with my new daughter."

_Oh, good. _Shepard looked at the door to the office again. _Garrus, I have no idea what's taking you so long in there, but I need reinforcements._

Solanna left the room, which left Shepard and the frail-looking woman alone in the rapidly gathering evening shadows. Shepard got up off the floor, where she'd been sitting with the children for the past two hours, and picked the only chair in the room that looked reasonably comfortable for a human frame, and waited.

Pilana let the silence stretch out for a while, and then asked, her voice mild, "You love my son? In spite of all the differences between you?"

Shepard chuckled. "Finally. Someone gets to the point."

"I'm dying, daughter. I don't have time for niceties. You've told me much about the past few years of my son's life. I'm grateful to know that he has spent that time with honor. But I need to know that he will spend the rest of his years with both honor and love in his life." The older woman had a queenly air, for all her fragility; for all that her skin looked paper-thin, stretched tight over her alien bones.

Lilitu thought for a moment. "Ma'am . . . this is the second time in a week that someone's asked me why I love Garrus. You deserve a better answer than the first person who asked." She swallowed over a throat suddenly tight. "It began, because I trusted him, and he trusted me. But it's more than just that. He's the best man I've ever met, of any species. He embodies every ideal I value—honor, loyalty, fidelity, justice. He reminds me of what _I_ want to be, every day. He _is_ what I fight for. Simple truth."

She looked out the window for a moment, feeling a cool breath of wind steal in, laden with the scent of all those strange trees that bloomed in the atrium garden. "You know how I was talking about how a gun is a tool a while ago? Garrus isn't a gun. He's a sword. That's what he's _for_. Fighting for those ideals, for the notion that the universe should be a better place than it is, that people should be better than they are. Trouble is, someone has spent a lot of time trying to convince Garrus that what he really ought to be is an axe, and not a sword. That a sword is somehow _worse_ than an axe. They're both tools. They both have their place. I'd much rather use an axe to cut down a tree than a sword. But someone—I don't know who—has been trying to use him to cut down trees. And _that's not what he's for_." She brought her eyes back around to meet Pilana's, holding the older woman's stare.

Pilana reached out one frail hand. "Very well spoken, daughter. Have you ever told _him_ all of that?"

The human woman blinked, and her mouth fell open. "I'm pretty sure I've told him how much I love him and respect him," she said, uncertainly. _I'm almost positive._ "Maybe not in so many words. And probably not all at once like that." _Maybe I should. Damnit. I __**have**__ told him, haven't I?_

Pilana actually chuckled. "You may call me Mother. I understand that your own family is dead?"

"Batarian slavers. It was a long time ago." She didn't want to sound dismissive, but she had no intention of reliving the attack in her mind twice in the same week. She thought she saw understanding in the other woman's eyes, however.

"Then our family is yours." The reply was simple.

Shepard glanced at the door to the study. "Is your word going to be enough on that topic?"

There was steel in the older woman's eyes, enough for a legion. Shepard suddenly knew which side of the family Garrus took after the most. "It will be. My husband is a good man, but his stubbornness will yield before mine." She coughed again, and Shepard leaned forward, concerned.

**Garrus**

Garrus had spent two of the most annoying hours of his life, cloistered in his father's study, listening to Gavius rant. They weren't the most _painful_ hours of his life—the day when Gavius had told him he'd blocked his son from Spectre training, it had hurt, in the way that dreams that die tend to burn. Physically, the impact of the gunship's bullets and rocket had been traumatic, as had been waking up in the _Normandy_'s sick bay, doped to the gills on pain meds, but still clearly able to feel the injury through the narcotic haze. Emotionally, the first twenty-four hours after his escape pod had landed on Alchera had been agonizing, finding out who had lived . . . and who had died. _I probably should have realized I had feelings for her even back then. Neither of us could have admitted to it at the time, though._

With all that in mind, Garrus had definitely endured worse. His father's disapproval and disappointment still stung, but how completely misguided it was, was almost funny. _Have I simply outgrown the need for his approval?_ Garrus wondered. _Nothing he's said so far has really made me feel that bad._

He leaned back in the chair he sat in, in front of his father's desk, staring at the screens that lined the wall behind it. Gavius had half the house wired for sound and video through surveillance devices. He'd always claimed it was for security purposes, and at the moment, most of the screens were inactive. Only one was turned on, focused on the sitting room, where most of the family had gathered. Their voices, happy and relaxed, made for a painful counterpoint to the incessant harangue that washed over Garrus. It would be so much more pleasant to be out there, sitting next to Shepard, with the rest of his family. To be the one to show her how to hold a turian child.

"I cannot believe how far you've fallen," Gavius snapped, bringing Garrus' attention back from the viewscreen. The older man paced back and forth across the room where Garrus sat in a chair in front of his father's desk. "To think, after your military service, I intervened to _save_ you from precisely this kind of . . . reckless, lawless behavior. I gave you the opportunity to enter the ministry, for the sake of all the spirits!"

The ministry, for turians, of course, meant the Law. Garrus remembered how difficult Shepard had found the concept at first. Lawyers, both for the prosecution and the defense, were ministers. Judges were ministers. Executioners were ministers. They were all priests of the Law. If a jury was required for a trial, the jurors were considered, for a time at least, lay priests of the spirit of the law. Police and C-Sec officers were considered priests of a sort, as well. "More militant, of course," he'd explained to Shepard.

She'd nodded, and replied, "So, more like Knights Templar, than like priests or monks." Her comment had led them deep into a discussion of Earth's history again, late one night, when the rest of the ship had been asleep.

Gavius' dream had been for one of his children—_any_ of his children—to start off as a priest of the law, and from there, to move up through the ranks until they could _write_ the laws. The laws of the Hierarchy were all written by judges and the Imperator, not by elected officials. But anyone could become a high judge . . . assuming they proved themselves worthy of the law.

Garrus watched Gavius, whose skin was starting to flush blue along his throat, mottled with anger. "So now you come back here, after spending the last two years outside the law, two years spent with mercenaries and the dregs of society. Married—with the irrevocable Tal'mae rites!—to a mercenary lawbreaker!"

Garrus felt his whole world narrow down. Nothing else his father had said so far had had much of an impact on him, but this? He was surprised by how calm, how quiet his voice was as he asked, "What did you just call my wife?"

"She's Spectre! Spectres are outside the law, have no regard for its spirit. What else would you call her?" Gavius' crest was flushed now with aggression and anger. "You're a pair of lawless renegades at best, roving the galaxy with a crew of mercenaries at your side. Assassins, criminals, terrorists, krogan thugs, and war criminals! I wouldn't be surprised at _any_ scum you'd be affiliated with at this point."

Garrus stood up. He'd never actually recognized it before, but he was taller than his father now. _Odd. He's always seemed to loom over me_, he realized, but the thought was distant. "My wife is a good, kind woman," he said, very quietly. "She has more respect for the law than you do, and honors the customs of each planet we visit. She is neither a mercenary nor a renegade, and you will treat her with the courtesy and respect that she is due, by tradition and by the law, even when she is not present in the room. Do I make myself clear?"

"Do not presume to dictate to me in my own house—"

The voices on the screen behind Gavius began to shift. Garrus could hear Shepard, prompted by the children, start to talk about their work. On Feros. On Ilos. Working to track down Saren. "If you're going to spy on people in your own house," Garrus said, interrupting his father, "maybe you should actually _listen_ to what they have to say."

Gavius' head jerked toward the screen, mandibles twitching in contempt. Garrus had to admit, Shepard told the story a lot differently than _he_ remembered it. He mostly remembered being along for the ride. _Did I really contribute that much to the tactics she used?_ He knew he'd driven the Mako through that frantic mission through the Prothean ruins, managing the hairpin turns while the others fired at the attacking geth, but had always thought he'd have been better placed at one of the guns. And tracking down Saelon . . . spirits damn the doctor. Shepard had kept him from executing the salarian on the spot, only to have Saelon leap up and attack them anyway. What had she said then? _We can't control others' actions_.

Looking at Gavius, as his father listened to the stories, face rigid, arms crossed over his chest, Garrus realized how true those words were, all over again.

On the screen, the rest of the family cleared out, and Pilana, his mother, started to interview his new wife in earnest. The earnestness of Lilu's voice, the impact of her words, hit her unseen audience hard. _I've always admired and respected her. I had __**no**__ idea how deep her respect for __**me**__ was._ Garrus knew he was smiling, broadly, in pure delight. _I thought I was a burned-out cop with nothing to offer besides a gun, and she sees . . . a lawbringer. A damn knight. Maybe the armor is a little different nowadays, and I might not carry a sword, but that's what she's telling my mother. And it's the truth. Her truth, maybe, but I kind of like her truth. Going to be hell living up to it, though._

Gavius was completely still now, slumped in his chair, listening as Pilana assured the human woman of her welcome into the clan. His growl was a faint rumble, deep in his chest, at her words.

Then, surprising both men as they watched the screen, Pilana changed the subject. "The Tal'mae can't even be broken in cases of barrenness, you know. Garrus always did know the letter of the law. Every other marriage rite can be broken on that count." Her mandibles opened in what could only be a proud smile. "It does worry me, however, my daughter, that the two of you will never have children."

On the screen, Garrus could see Shepard stand and cross the room to sit at the older woman's feet. _How did she know to do that? It wouldn't have been in any etiquette book. It's so natural, and so perfect. _"I've thought about adopting," his wife said, her voice a little tinny through the speakers. "I spent two years in foster care after my parents and little brother were killed. My foster-parents weren't bad people, but it was very clear that this was a temporary situation for all of us. There are a lot of kids out there who need families. Human and turian alike."

Pilana nodded. "This is certainly true, and even a purist like my husband would agree that adoption is a very traditional way to strengthen the clan."

Gavius rumbled again in his chair, but said not a word. Garrus was glad. Lilitu hadn't mentioned any of these thoughts to him. As far as he'd been able to tell, she'd been so focused on the Collectors and the Reapers, that none of this had crossed her mind. And yet, obviously, it must have.

Shepard sat very still for a moment. "Mother Pilana, if I ever find the technology—and the Collectors, with their detailed knowledge of the genetics of so many races, might even _have_ the right tech—let me assure you, that I'd be happy to have a child with Garrus."

_Wait, what?_

Onscreen, Shepard went on. "It may not be possible. But I talked it over with a pretty damn good geneticist, a salarian scientist named Mordin Solus. I've already been trying to find turian foods that won't cause an allergic reaction for me, first, to reduce the histamine reactions Garrus and I can experience, but also so that if I ever _did_ manage to carry his child, it wouldn't starve inside of me."

Garrus stood completely still, realigning his thoughts. He'd thought that the food experiments were solely to avoid any anaphylactic shock issues that they could encounter, if, say, they happened to bleed into each others' open wounds in combat. Or if his fluids entered any abrasions during intercourse. She'd _never_ mentioned a secondary purpose. Slowly, his smile widened.

**Shepard**

Back in the sitting room, Shepard was unaware of the comm feed that was exposing so much of her private thoughts to her husband and father-in-law. She explained to Pilana, "Also, depressing my histamine reactions would also decrease the chance that my body would reject a child's tissue." Shepard grimaced. "There's no way around it. Even if the tech exists to . . . to get our DNA to play nicely together and design a child that wouldn't have health problems, it'd still be a high-risk pregnancy. There'd be a pretty good chance I'd spend most of it flat on my back, being monitored and on enough medications to make an elephant keel over. But if the chance exists, I'll take it." She offered Pilana a rueful smile. "Just not today."

She knew that turians couldn't cry; they simply didn't have tear ducts. But Pilana was clearly moved, clutching the human's hand in her own. "You've thought about this."

"A lot, yeah. If I don't think about the future, then what the hell am I even fighting for?" Shepard replied. "Everyone needs dreams. Otherwise, you're just a meat puppet, fighting when someone tells you to fight." She paused, and said, more quietly, "This just happens to be _my_ dream."

Apparently, that was the right answer.


	12. Almost Purely Gratuitous

**Chapter 12: Almost Purely Gratuitous**

Shepard entered the dining room, and found herself completely alone, at least for the moment. The table was set for dinner, but from the sounds of things, everyone else was chasing one child or another around the house or otherwise occupied. She walked around, a bit restless, and found a small table tucked into an alcove in the room, and stopped to really look at it.

It had a half a dozen small statues on it, each with a candle lit beside it. Bending down to examine them, careful not to touch, she realized that each image was a depiction of one family member or another. There was Garrus, in fact, but his statue seemed oddly unfinished; it was still attached to a large block of wood. "It's the family spirit table," he explained from behind her. "The ones at the back are honored ancestors. That one's the spirit of the house, and of course, that one there is the spirit of the law." He pointed at one statue that was holding a measuring rod and a sword. _Huh, similar to the Roman image of Lady Justice. Except the turian version isn't blindfolded._

"So, household gods?"

"More or less like your Romans, yes. In this case, my mother carved these." One claw tapped his own statue. "If her hands aren't too shaky to finish this one, it'll be interesting to see how she adds you."

The human blinked. "I can honestly say, I would never have thought of that." She looked down at the statue, and then back up again. She didn't know how to process that piece of information, and she wasn't sure what made her more apprehensive—seeing how Garrus' mother really _saw_ the alien woman in his life, or the fact of being included so tightly in family ritual. She cleared her throat, and shifted the topic slightly. "All of them are kept by the parents? Do the kids ever get to take theirs with them to their new homes?"

"Oh, yeah, of course. But when there's an extended family gathering, it's considered good luck to bring everyone's spirit statue with them." He shrugged, looking a little embarrassed.

"Hey, beats the hell out of rabbit feet or Zodiac signs."

He stared at her blankly, and she spread her hands. "Long explanation. I'll save it for later."

Dinner turned out to be a much more festive affair than she'd expected, filled with a dozen voices all talking at once. She couldn't understand all of the conversation—the children all spoke galactic, learning it in school, but the adults were rusty, and more accustomed to speaking in their native language in the home. Turning on her VI for full translation would be cheating, and she wouldn't _learn_ the language that way, but leaving it turned down to a minimal level tended to isolate her from the conversation.

Gavius was subdued, and had little to say for himself. Pilana made her approval of Garrus and Lilitu well-known, calling the human _daughter_ on several occasions, and offering her choice bits of meat from her own plate. Shepard kept a datapad open on her knee under the table, making sure that everything she consumed would not be problematic. She would still, however, probably need to eat a mealbar in an hour or two, simply because no matter what she ate from the table, it would have no nutritional value at all for her.

She learned that Solana designed environmental systems for starships, and that her husband, Allardus, was a geneticist involved with increasing biodiversity in crops, particularly for transplanting native Palaven plants to other worlds. Egidus, Garrus' brother, turned out to be an architect, and his mate worked with him to design the landscapes that surrounded his various buildings. Shepard couldn't help but notice that _none_ of them had gone into the law, although many of the various aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters of Gavius and Pilana, seemed to be affiliated with the law in one form or another.

Finally, at close to local midnight (and Palaven had a twenty-eight hour day), Garrus and she managed to beg off from any further company, and retreat to their room. "This was my room, growing up," he commented as the door closed behind them. "Mother's changed a few things in here, it seems."

He flicked on a light, in deference to her human vision, and she blinked at the sight of a turian bed. "Wow. I have no idea how you get comfortable in any of the beds on the _Normandy ._ . . and _no_ idea how I'm going to sleep tonight." It was a rounded, nest-like cavity built into the floor, with a handful of blankets to pad the bottom, but no real cushioning.

"Mom said she stuck some extra pillows in the storage compartment for you. She doesn't want you bruising." He looked over his shoulder at her as he pulled a variety of cushions of different shapes and sizes out of a cabinet in the wall. "So, I hear you've got some ideas on how we'd have kids."

She stood, stock-still, and a pillow landed bounced off her nerveless hands before falling to the floor. "Okay," she said, picking it up and tossing it into the concavity that was the bed. "I know there was barely any time between my conversation with your mom and everyone settling in for dinner for her to have relayed that. You were also forty feet away behind a rather solid door while I was talking to her. Not even turian hearing is that damn good."

He tossed another pillow her direction. "Nope. But my father, in his infinite wisdom, has half the house wired for sound and video."

Lilitu cursed, for once in plain English. "You have got to be _shitting_ me. Is there nowhere in the entire galaxy where what you and I say and do _isn't_ monitored?" She looked around the room, annoyed. "Hello? Anyone listening or watching? The show won't be starting till the end of this conversation. Go get your drinks and snacks now!"

Garrus caught her wrist and pulled her to him, laughing. "He swore, up and down, that the bedrooms aren't monitored, other motion detectors at the windows."

"And you _believe_ him?" Shepard activated her omnitool, and set it to scan for electronic devices in the room. "What's this thing?" 

"That's an _aphora_. Similar principle to a coffee-maker." He caught her other wrist now, and turning her omnitool off, pulled her down into his lap as he took a seat in the room's only chair. "You were . . . remarkably eloquent, you know," he told her, voice rasping against her ear. "He hasn't _quite_ abandoned the thought that you're some kind of insane human mercenary who's just out to make a fast credit off her Spectre status—"

Shepard stiffened in his arms, and bit off another curse. Garrus nipped just under her jaw to shush her. "He didn't much like your account of the last couple of years. He was all set to start in on a second round of how I was a lawless renegade when your . . . generous explanation of my activities on Omega started." He looked down at her, and smiled. "And I've never been more complimented in my life."

"I meant every word."

"I know." He touched his forehead to hers, still cradling her in his lap. "Never seen him at a loss for words before." Garrus offered her his mouth, and she leaned in to kiss him, lightly running her tongue along the sharp points of his teeth, while his taloned hands kneaded lightly at her back. "What I _can't_ figure out, for the life of me, is why you never told me all your thoughts about children."

She looked up at him warily. "Didn't want to scare you off. Most human guys think children and commitment and stuff like that are a bit frightening."

"Human males are idiots. There's no greater compliment to a turian male, than planning to have his offspring." He nipped the side of her neck again, very lightly. "The second greatest compliment, of course, is wearing his teeth marks on your skin."

"Shoulder, Garrus, shoulder. Fewer arteries." She gasped as he took her at her word, biting down at the juncture of neck and shoulder, feeling her whole body go limp and pliant in response. "I'm surprised you've never left scars. Wouldn't that be . . . the ultimate compliment?"

His jaw tightened reflexively for a moment, and then he released the bite to whisper, a little hoarsely, "Don't tempt me right now. I'd love nothing more, but I'm not taking any chances with infection."

Her hands reached up now, stroking along his fringe, preening, a gesture that showed love, affection, intimacy, while his own fingers ran up behind her neck to stroke her hair in similar fashion. He couldn't help but remember their very first time, in her cabin, and chuckled a little under his breath. She leaned back in his lap, her back arching a bit. "What?"

"Oh, just thinking back. To right before we made the Omega-4 relay jump."

Her grin flashed in the dim light. "You were _so_ nervous. I've never understood why." She leaned back in and kissed his mouth again, lips soft against the plates of his face.

He broke away after a moment, biting gently under her ear, along the neck, back down to her shoulder again. "To be honest, I was afraid that after all the weeks of build up and anticipation, I might not react physically to someone who wasn't my own species. And that would have just been _embarrassing. _Not to mention, the awkwardness might have killed a damned good friendship."

She shifted in his lap, hands moving down from his thorax to his abdomen, before exploring lower. He growled in response, an involuntary sound, as she found bare skin, and, with gentle pressure, urged his plates to slide apart, allowing his phallus to emerge, damp, into her hand. "I think we've resolved the issue of whether or not you react," she whispered, her voice taking on that throaty sound that he never heard outside the bedroom, a sound he treasured. He let his head tip back, and closed his eyes to enjoy the sensation of her strange, slender fingers on him.

_The first time, she'd sat on his lap just this way, talking to him, trying to make him laugh. "You really didn't watch the vids?" she asked, hands in the safe zone, exploring his chest and cowl._

"_The _Normandy_'s crew berths aren't really designed for privacy. I didn't want to have to explain to the five humans in the racks around me why I was watching interspecies porn. It might've generated a little gossip." Her hands had wandered lower, and even through the barrier of clothing, made him inhale sharply._

"_Too late to worry about gossip. Kasumi tells me we've been scuttlebutt for weeks."_

"_Did __**you**__ watch them?"_

_She coughed. "Actually . . . no. Read the material, but watching felt a little odd." Her skin flushed pink, but she met his eyes. "Hell, Garrus, we're two adults here. I think we might be able to get by with just telling each other what feels good."_

"_Well, what you're doing right now . . . that's very good."_

"_I think I can do better." _

_She'd slipped from his lap then, and knelt before him, finding the fastenings of his pants. He'd already begun to emerge; the shock of those pink, warm lips, the flickering of that soft, wet tongue, had been almost more than he could bear . . . ._

After a few moments of gentle fingers stroking his length, he felt her slide out of his lap, settling to her knees on the floor in front of him. Knowing from experience now what she wanted to do, he unfastened his pants, allowing her free access, and she kissed along the length of his legs, from the knees up, before slowly, with a quick glance at his face, settling her sweet, exotic, alien mouth around him. Garrus felt the immediate shock of reaction, inhaled sharply, and groaned a little. "I'm never going to get over how good that feels."

"So sad," she whispered, coming up for air. "Your people are deprived. Might explain why so many of you are so grumpy." Her mouth descended again, this time taking as much of his length in as she could. His fingers tangled in her hair, trying not to clutch too tightly as the almost unbearably sweet, velvety feel of her mouth and tongue surrounded him, filled him with electric sparks of sensation.

After a minute or two, he tugged on her hair, an unspoken command to stop. "No more. I'll spill." His refractory period might be only a minute or two, but he wanted to wait, to draw this out.

She released him, and her smile was very pleased indeed. Garrus stood, and, without fanfare, picked her up and deposited her on the pile of pillows that hadn't quite made it to the bed yet. She started to chuckle a little, at least until he followed her down to the makeshift bed. "So," he said, pulling up her tunic to nip at her stomach, asking, "You mean to tell me you weren't nervous the first time? Not even a little bit?"

She gasped as his own hands went exploring now, sliding under her trousers to find her center. After a moment, she admitted, her voice tight and a little breathy, "Oh, hell yeah, I was nervous. Couldn't let you know that, though. Or we'd have been . . . oh . . . avoiding the issue . . . for another week. Or two." She reached down, and, arching her hips, pulled her pants down, giving him better access.

_Removing layers of clothing had revealed naked skin to both of them. His hands were so gentle on her, so tentative, as if he'd thought she was going to bruise like the petals of some alien flower. He'd cupped her breasts uncertainly, then slid his hands to her waist with more authority, curling his fingers into her hips, pushing her back to sit on the edge of the bed. Kneeling now, himself, he'd moved her legs apart, and unexpectedly, he'd laughed._

"_What?"_

"_You're . . . pink. It matches the color of your lips. I hadn't expected that." _

"_Well, you're __**blue**__. It makes sense. Bloodflow." Then she'd sucked in a breath as he'd traced the folds with one finger, moving them apart. _

"_This looks important," he'd commented, tracing a light circle over the sensitive nubbin, sending shockwaves down her spine, making her arch and moan. "Like that?"_

"_Faster," was all she'd been able to say in response. He was finally touching her, exploring her, learning her, as she'd so often dreamed he would . . . ._

One large finger nudged aside her folds, and slid deeply into her, exploring gently, while his thumb found its way to the little external nubbin, rolling it in a gentle circle, gradually picking up speed. Her entire body tensed, arched, and she felt the welcome, liquid fire pour out of her, trickling down her thighs. "I approve of your interrogation methods," she gasped. "Just so you know. Very effective."

His shoulders shook with a brief laugh. "So, that makes me what, the good cop?"

"Bad cop. Very bad cop."

"That wasn't bad cop. _This_ is bad cop." He leaned forward, and his raspy tongue replaced his thumb, licking and swirling around her, while all the while his finger opened her, explored her, readied her. The sensation was like a closed circuit, current flowing in an endless circle between those two points, the internal and the external. She arched again, realizing her voice had gone up in pitch by about an octave, but unable to stop whimpering until the wave of fire crested again, and she fell silent in its wake. "I love it when you make those sounds," he told her, grinning.

She sat up now, pushing him onto his back. "If we're reliving the first night, I think _this_ was next," she told him, throwing one leg over his thin waist to straddle him.

"Oh, definitely, yeah. Come to think of it, you looked worried right around this point." He grinned up at her.

_He'd brought her to orgasm with fingers alone, opening her depths for him. She'd pushed his shoulders back, and seen worry in his eyes. "Did I hurt you? Were those good sounds?"_

"_Very good sounds. I'm ready for more, if you are. Lie back."_

_He'd done so, and she'd slipped a leg over him, looking down. She'd known from the diagrams that, morphologically, at least, they should be compatible. He wouldn't be shaped like a corkscrew or forked, or anything like that. Her fingers and her mouth had told her that he certainly felt good, tasted good, smelled good. But this was the final step, and she'd wanted to linger over it, just for a moment. She stroked him till he groaned, then met his eyes, lined them up, and sank down._

She leaned down and bit his throat, rounded teeth scraping on his skin. "Well, I was. I knew from the diagrams that we'd, well, _fit_—but I wasn't sure how _well_. Or what it would feel like. Turians tend to be a little intimidating-looking." She grinned down at him. "I think I've mentioned this before, but there's something about being towered over by an angry turian that makes something small, furry, and mouse-shaped wake up somewhere near the human brainstem and start squeaking 'run away, run away, or you're going to be eaten!'"

"Only a little bit," he told her, his voice mild, catching her left wrist to nip at the soft skin there. "Here and there. Around the edges."

Just then her right hand found him, positioned him, and then she let herself sink down onto him, slowly . . . oh so slowly, her eyes half-closing in enjoyment of the rich sensations, beginning to rock on him slowly, whimpering. He lifted his hands to her breasts, providing support as she began to move more and more quickly, chasing her own release, engendering exquisite sensations for him as well. It felt almost exactly like the song a crystal glass sings, when its rim is rubbed with a wet finger, vibrating everywhere within her, down her legs, up her spine . . . .

When she shivered and slowed once more, leaning forward to bite his throat again, he took the opportunity to strike, and suddenly shifted, rolling her over onto her tummy. "If you hadn't noticed, neither of us is on duty in the morning, and we have eight hours until dawn," he whispered against her ear. "I think it's more than time we tested the limits of human stamina," he told her, and, gripping her hips from behind, took charge.

Quite some time later, as they both tried to find a comfortable position for both of them to curl up and sleep in the bed, Garrus pulled her against, him, her back to his chest, her backside nestled against his hips, her neck and shoulders in perfect proximity for little bites, should the urge arise. The biggest surprise, he mused, had been how compatible their physiology had really been.

The second biggest surprise had come after they'd returned from the Collector base, when she'd invited him up for another round, eventually telling him that having him sneak up and down the elevator demeaned both of them, and for god's sake to move his kit into her quarters already.

He chuckled under his breath. "Hmm?" she mumbled, not moving.

"Oh, just thinking. You make so many different sounds, you know." He couldn't repress the desire to tease, just a little.

"Mmm."

"The high-pitched ones are wonderful, but when you get all low-pitched and feral, you sound like a pyjak."

_That _got her eyes open. "I do _not._ Monkey, yes. Monkeys are at least relatives. But pyjaks . . . ." She waved a finger at him. "That's just insulting." She yawned. "I'll think of adequate retribution in the morning."

"I'll be waiting for my captain's mast hearing in dread," he assured her, gave her one last nip on the neck, and settled in to sleep.


	13. Back to Work

**Chapter 13: Back to Work**

The next morning dawned bright and sunny and almost unbearably humid. Shepard slipped out of the concave bed, groaned a little under her breath at how _stiff_ her neck and back were from sleeping in what was, not to put too fine a point on it, a _nest_, and got dressed. She slipped out of the room, trying not to disturb Garrus, wanting to go for a walk to loosen the tight muscles.

Pilana wasn't feeling well, and Solana was quite busy with her mother's case, administering intravenous medications with the help of a little salarian nurse who'd arrived early in the morning. Lilitu took her morning mealbar to share with Urz out into the gardens behind the house, making sure to pull on her radiation coveralls, and discovered that most of the children were already outside with Gavius.

Small lizards and birds moved over the flowering trees, pollinating them—Palaven's ecosystem had never evolved insect life. Urz padded along with her, sniffing the garden's flowers with interest, and snapping half-heartedly at a tiny bird. "Good boy," Shepard said, a little uncertainly. Perhaps varren just _needed_ to hunt, the way krogan _needed_ to fight. Even if they weren't really interested in eating their prey.

Gavius was already at work in the garden—his habits inclined him to work outdoors before the worst heat of the day settled in. He kept an affectionate eye on all of his grandchildren, but accorded Shepard only a curt nod before setting in with his clippers to prune some of the bushes. From the vehemence with which he was doing so, she had to wonder if each dead blossom cut away wore anyone in particular's face for him.

**Garrus**

Inside the house, Garrus woke up, and went to go have breakfast in his mother's room, holding her hand as the most painful of the medications coursed through her system. It hurt to watch her twist and writhe on the couch, not making a sound, but fighting the disease, and fighting the medication as _it_ fought the disease, too. Her fingers were so appallingly thin, that he could see the shape of her knuckles through the parchment-like skin. "I'm glad you're here," she told him, her voice thin. "And I'm very glad that you're happy."

There wasn't much warning. Indoors and outdoors, two omnitools flared to life, and Joker's voice crackled, in the clear, "Commander! We have inbound hostile vessels coming into the Palaven system. Aspect matches Collector ships."

Right behind his words, EDI's voice came over the comms. "Planetary defense grid is arming, but based on previous encounters with Collector vessels, may not be adequate. There are at least six Collector vessels present. Additonally, several dozen smaller vessels are exiting each main ship, and spreading out over the planet's surface."

Joker's voice came back through, though the static was starting to rise. "Wait, all of a sudden, they've got drop-ships? Since when? Damnit, I hate it when the bad guys learn to stop putting all their eggs in one basket."

**Shepard**

Shepard was already on her feet, her eyes on the clear blue sky above, as if she could, by will alone, see through that blue veil to where her ship was docked in the Palaven shipyards. "Joker, get the _Normandy _out of the docking clamps. You're a sitting target if you can't maneuver." Urz growled at her feet, looking around for enemies, sensing from her voice, her scent, that she was getting ready to fight.

Was it her imagination, or was that a pinprick of light? And was it getting closer?

"Already done, commander," Joker's voice cracked back. "I am _not_ losing another _Normandy_ to these guys."

**Garrus**

Garrus looked out the window, and could see, in that blue and blameless sky, the first sparks of light—like lightning, without a storm—that suggested that the satellite defense grid was firing. "Come on," he muttered under his breath, trying to _will_ his people's military into action. "Get those ships in the air, people. Come on." He turned away from the window, and, with a quick, hurried nod to his mother and sister, headed for his room, where his gear and Shepard's was stacked.

Solana followed him out into the corridor. "Garrus, what are you doing? You can't possibly imagine that you can do anything about this! You've got a _shuttle_ out there. Let the defense grid do its job."

She faltered as he turned towards her. "There are drop-ships incoming, Sol. I know better than most what that means. So yeah, if there's anything I can do about it, I'm damned well going to _do_ it." He opened the door to the room, and started pulling on his armor over his casual clothes.

**Shepard**

Outside, Shepard scanned the sky. More flares of light, this time a trail of pinpricks forming a slight arc to the southeast. "What the hell was that, Joker?" Shepard demanded. "Talk to me."

EDI's voice came back on the radio now, hints of sorrow in her tones, but static was starting to cut through the message. _Jamming. Wonderful. _ ". . . Collector ship has taken out . . . defense platforms . . . geosynchronous orbit. . . . current course and speed. . . land near the . . . most populous city . . . eastern continent. . . . other two ships . . . similar openings in . . . grid."

Nerves keening with the sweet, siren song of adrenaline, Shepard stared up into the sky. _Why here? Why now? They've focused on humans almost exclusively before, and only on our outlying colonies._ She put it aside as irrelevant for the moment, keying her omnitool, trying to boost the gain on her signal to punch through the jamming. "Joker, you get the _Normandy_ between that ship and the planet, and _stop_ them."

"Which one, Commander? I've got what you might call a target-rich environment up here." That came through in the clear.

"The one heading for the most populous city. The turians have _got_ to be scrambling their ships by now."

EDI's voice again. "Without the upgraded armaments and technology possessed by the _Normandy_, the turian ships will have no realistic chance of defeating a Collector vessel, commander."

"One thing at a time, EDI. Just stop the first one. I know you two can." She severed the radio connection, her face a blank mask of concentration. "Damnit, I should be up there. C'mon, Joker."

Yes, that pinprick of light was definitely getting closer. She jogged toward the Kodiak shuttle, calling over her shoulder to the children, "Get back inside." She opened the shuttle's main door, and keyed up its tracking computer, frowning as radar and ladar both came back negative.

Young Rinus stuck his head into the shuttle over her shoulder. "What can we expect?" he asked, his eyes alight. He'd obviously overhead some of the radio chatter.

"Probably ground assault somewhere on the planet in the next few minutes," Shepard told him, purposely trying to wipe the eager anticipation out of his expression. Just then, the screen fuzzed out in a wash of static. "Jammed. Damnit. Get the other kids back inside, Rinus," she told him, and, turning, was surprised to see Gavius right behind her as well.

"Just what the hell is going on?" the older man asked her.

She didn't have time to answer. There was a humming sound near her ear, and she ducked out of reflex. When she looked up, she couldn't quite believe her eyes. _Seeker swarm! Already? How the hell . . . ?_

She tabbed her radio. "Seeker swarms on the ground! Repeat, seeker swarms, on the ground! Those drop ships must be stealthed somehow—they've already gotten through!"

Her omnitool hummed at her wrist, putting out Mordin's carefully designed signal, repelling the bioengineered drones away from her . . . but Gavius swore and slapped a hand against his neck, where he'd been stung. Twenty feet away, she could see that the various children were shrieking in fear at the strange creatures, and, bunched up against the garden wall, were each being frozen into stasis in turn.

Shepard reached for the rack beside the shuttle's main hatch, and came up with only one weapon: Joker's spare shotgun, which had last seen use as he covered her retreat out of the Collector base.

At her feet, Urz snarled, uncoiled, and bolted toward the children. Not to attack them, but to protect them. The varren stood his ground over their prone forms, and Shepard realized, to her surprise, that the seekers were completely ignoring the animal. _Seekers ignore animals in favor of sapient life. They can distinguish between the two?_ Pushing it out of her mind, she raced across the garden herself, throwing herself down beside the varren, putting her body between the children and harm.

**Joker**

"Okay, you heard the lady." Joker didn't like this one bit. There was no command staff left aboard the ship. He technically couldn't even order the ship set to battle stations, but he hit the appropriate spot on his console anyway. It was him, EDI, various crewmen, Kasumi and the engineering staff, Legion down in the AI core, and oh yes, Grunt was on board, in case of any boarding parties. _Not really optimal. "_Why does bad stuff happen any time the whole squad leaves the ship? Maybe in the future, the commander could at _least_ leave someone else up here to take some of the blame."

Even as he grumbled, his hands flew over the aerogel consoles, and the ship sprang into action, plunging toward the planet. "Jeff, if you don't alter our angle of descent, we're going to experience thermal issues."

"I know, I know, but there's no other way to close the gap any faster," he said, feeling the ship's inertial dampening system start to strain against the intense G forces of their rapid descent. The outer atmosphere of the planet began to buffet against their screens as well, and the shockwaves vibrated up through his chair, rattling his very bones.

The Collector ship seemed aware of its danger, and began to turn away from the planet. "That's right, you flying anthill, you can't fire the big guns at me till you turn around," Joker taunted it, sending the _Normandy _into a sharp bank to starboard, wheeling away.

As if in response to his words, smaller mass effect projectiles shot out of side guns. His hands danced over the consoles, and the _Normandy_, like his partner, pirouetted in space. "Kinetic barriers at seventy-five percent," EDI told him. "Atmospheric buffeting will diminish their capacity rapidly."

"Hold together, girl. We can do this. Find me a weak point somewhere."

"Their engines are located in a different portion of the ship than other Collector vessels we have encountered before. The ship is also much more heavily shielded."

"Hurray for bad guys who can learn." He sent the _Normandy _into a steep dive, and the ship rocked as, in spite of his best efforts, one of the projectiles slammed into the hull.

"Hull breach on deck four," EDI informed him.

"Sorry, girl, I'll do better. Just give me a damn target." He tabbed the intercom. "Who's on the forward batteries? Kasumi? Get up there and help us lock onto a target." He spun the _Normandy_ over, presenting its top decks instead of the sensitive engineering section, and raked at the Collector ship with the ship's smaller guns while he waited for a firing solution for the Thanix cannons.

"I'm on it," Kasumi assured him, sounding out of breath. She'd probably _run_ from her position down in engineering to get to the forward batteries.

"Here," EDI said suddenly. "This area of their hull appears weaker than the rest, and I detect volatile chemical compounds inside of it." Joker knew without asking that EDI was showing the location to both him and Kasumi at the same time.

"Right, here we go." Joker dodged several more projectiles, flipped the _Normandy _end for end, and raced up along the z-axis to get a better firing position. "EDI, Kasumi, _now_ would be really _good!_"

The Thanix cannons pulsed, and he could feel the rumble through the deckplates. The Collector ship suddenly had a gaping hole in its side, and he could see explosions inside the ship, where there was still oxygen for flames to burn. "Jeff, the ship is partially disabled, but is very likely to explode—"

"Already on it," he told EDI, veering the _Normandy _away, and cueing another barrage from the main guns from a safer distance.

The Collector ship imploded quite satisfyingly. "Hope our friends in the shipyards got all that on vid," Joker commented, taking off his hat to wipe his forehead. "Where are the other ships?"

"Three are descending toward the planet's surface. Two are attacking the Palaven shipyards." EDI told him. "Turian ships are scrambling to meet them. However, many of the Collector drop-ships have landed successfully. They seem to be employing some variant on stealth technology that is confusing the ground defense towers and the satellites, but does not seem to affect _our_ ability to detect them."

"Did I just say 'hurray, bad guys who can learn?' I take it all back." Joker scratched at his chin for a moment. "Can we get through the jamming yet?"

"Not to the planet's surface, no, but I believe I can get a signal through to the shipyards."

"Well, that's better than nothing. See if you can get Tali or Alenko on the line. If they can pry even one more of the _Normandy-_class ships loose from dry-dock. . . . "

"Jeff, those ships have not had shakedowns yet. While their weapons have been upgraded to Thanix cannons, they lack ablative armor and screens. There is no way to determine if they're combat-ready. There may not even be helmsmen available." Her voice was definitely worried now.

"Just patch me through. It's the only idea I've got that doesn't involve the two of us fighting five Collector ships with our fingernails!"

**Shepard**

On the ground, Shepard was getting nothing but static on her radio, and had grabbed Rinus and moved to the relative cover of the garden wall, where the other children were, already frozen in stasis. She literally knelt over Serana's prone form, a knee on either side, protecting the child's body with her own. She could see the fear in all their eyes, though they couldn't move or speak. _Damnit. Twenty rounds of ammo, no shields, no armor, and I know damn well we've got enemies incoming, but from __**where**__?_

An all-too-familiar sound greeted her ears. "We are the harbinger of your genetic destiny," a voice called from the treeline behind the house. _Oh, wonderful._ She popped her head up briefly, ducking back down behind cover again almost instantly, and tabbed her radio. "Garrus, Collectors inbound. Three to my right. Unshielded drones," she said, voice clipped. Rinus, who was crowding very close to her to stay in the protective field of her omnitool's song, ducked his head even lower as the first bullets rattled into the opposite side of the garden wall, shaking dirt and mortar loose on their side, showering the children's unblinking faces. Urz growled low in his chest, and scrambled up and over the high wall, racing for his first target, leaping up to take a Collector's throat in his powerful jaws.

When the first wave of shots died down, Shepard risked another look, and dropped back down once more, keying her radio once again. "Four to the left. Urz has the fifth one down. Two are shielded and armored. Moving to flank."

She raised up and took her first shot, a concussive round to knock back one of the Collectors to her right, trying to prevent them from flanking her, and followed up with a regular shot to keep it on the ground. _Nineteen. Eighteen. _She dropped back down again, visualizing the whole scene in her head in the hard, clear light that adrenaline always brought her. She couldn't know it, but her face was a blank mask of concentration, her eyes empty. Then she popped up again, and leveled a quick biotic slam against one of the unshielded Collectors to the left. Crouching again, she keyed her radio one more time. "Garrus, I need my goddamned angel of death, and I need him _right the hell now!_"

**Garrus and Shepard**

Upstairs, Garrus ran into his mother's room once more, which overlooked the rear gardens of the house. Neither his mother nor his sister recognized the set of his face, the cold, empty gleam in his eyes. None of the family had ever seen his work face before. Shepard had called for her angel of death, and he was there.

He kicked out a window, dropped to a crouch, and found his first target.

Below, Shepard heard the first _BAM_-_BAM _of the sniper rifle going off behind her, and breathed a deep sigh of relief. _There's my Archangel. _A quick glance told her that one of the Collectors to her left was dead, double-tap to the head. She pumped the next round into the shotgun's chamber, risked a glance, and took her next shot, aiming right. _Seventeen. Sixteen._

The next sixty seconds were a mix of confusion, cacophony, and the acrid reek of gunpowder, all combined with the ionized smell that mass effect-propelled missiles left in oxygen-rich atmospheres. In her mind, the count kept ticking. _Twelve. Damnit, that was a miss. Eleven, crap, it ducked back into cover. _She ducked, and a bullet hit the wall in front of her, sending chips of stone flying into her face, leaving tiny cuts.

Fresh adrenaline poured into her system. She edged to her right, and saw more reinforcements pouring through the trees, and bared her teeth. _Husks. Goddamn zombies._ She slammed another round into place, and blasted the nearest one. _Am __**not **__going hand-to-hand with these __**mentulae**__. _Urz roared and charged one of the husks, lifting the shambling creature off the ground and shaking it like a ragdoll, showing for all time that he was definitely _not_ a puppy. _Ten rounds. Nine. Eight. Too damn many of them—where are they coming from? Seven. Six._

A yell from her left alerted her, and she saw Rinus being tackled by one of the husks. She stood and slammed the butt of her shotgun into the creature's face. For a moment, it was the batarian she'd killed on Mindoir, in her family's animal pen, and then it was back to being what it was—the last remnant of something that had once been as human as herself. She slammed it again, and again, trying to get it _off _the kid—

And searing pain shot through her exposed left shoulder, spun her around, and dropped her to the ground, winded by the impact, not even feeling the pain yet. Her first dazed thought was that she was damn lucky the bullet hadn't hit her head. Then the assaulted nerve endings began to shriek at her brain that they'd been injured. She pulled herself up to a sitting position, still clutching the shotgun in her hands, dimly aware that the stock seemed to be wet.

Rinus threw the now-shattered body of the husk off of himself and the pile of children, and knelt beside her, eyes wide as he stared at her. "It's so . . . _red_ . . . ." he said, sounding shocked.

Up on the rooftop, Garrus watched the whole scene, and his mind, already distant and cold, simply went blank. He slung the bag that had been resting at his feet over his shoulder, turned to his mother and sister, told them flatly, "Stay down," and jumped out the window, dropping and rolling onto the next roof level, before sliding down its angled surface and landing on the ground. He took a couple more shots to encourage the Collectors and husks to keep their heads down, and ran for the wall, dropping to cover Shepard with his body. A couple of tweaks to his omnitool, and his personal shields extended. They were thinner this way, and wouldn't take as much damage, but they'd cover her now, too, at least for the moment.

"What the hell?" he asked her, peeking over the wall and shooting. "I thought _I_ was the one who kept forgetting to put on my armor." He still had his sniper eyes, his Archangel eyes, in place, but he let the focus drop long enough to be Garrus again for an instant, before finding another target.

She grimaced. "Not entirely my idea, sorry."

"Rinus, put pressure on that wound," he rapped out. "I've got medigel ready to go, but you need to help her stop the bleeding before she can get into her armor."

The boy took off his shirt and gingerly pressed it against the wound. "It's so red!" he repeated again, still in tones of disbelief.

Garrus took another shot, and glanced down. In addition to his hacking and electronics skills, he'd been squad medic back in the day; C-Sec first-responder training covered almost every species in Council space, after all. "Nevermind. Cover us," he told Rinus, taking the shotgun out of his wife's slack grip, and handing it to the boy.

"Five rounds left," Lilitu told Rinus as Garrus dropped to press the cloth tighter to the wound. He could see that the entry point was from the rear; there was an exit wound through the front that was larger and torn.

Good news," he told her, leaning his head in close. "Bullet went right through. I won't have to dig it out. I don't see any shrapnel or signs of contaminants."

She grunted a bit as he examined the wound, but her eyes were starting to clear from their daze, and his fingers, clamped to her wrist, told him that her heartbeat was very fast for a human, but hammering away steadily. "Four," she told him as Rinus fired a round. These were all good signs. Humans had been known to die from shock. Their species was resilient and resourceful and tough, but sometimes so frighteningly fragile. "Three," she added, trying to sit up further. He shoved her back down and sprayed medi-gel directly into the wound, heard her sigh in relief as the pain started to fade. Then he packed the wound with the cloth that was already saturated with her red blood. It wasn't sterile, but the medi-gel would help. "Two. Damnit!"

"Armor and weapons are in the bag," he said tersely, pulled Rinus back down as the last casing ejected from the shotgun, and went hunting for his next target.

Shepard sat up and started pulling on her armor. Her hands itched for her assault rifle, but for the moment, defense was a lot more important than offense. Once every piece was in place, she tossed Rinus a fresh clip, grabbed her weapon, and crouched beside Garrus, patting him on the lower back twice, the old signal. _I'm here, got your back. _Moving in perfect tandem, they called shots to each other, passed tactical advice, and started to go on the offensive.

To Rinus' young eyes, it looked nothing short of something out of myth. Two warriors, imbued with spirits so elemental, so perfectly matched, that death itself was powerless against them. To Gavius, frozen in silence across the garden, they were figures out of nightmare, ruthless in the cold perfection of their killing. To Solana, watching from a window sealed against the seekers, they were the spirit of the family incarnate, protecting her children when she could not.

Finally, the air was still again, the breathless silence that comes after battle, before the stunned animal life in the trees and underbrush regains its collective composure and begins to chirp and thrum once more. A few seekers still hummed here and there in the air, but most of the creatures had moved on, looking for other targets. Urz leaped back over the wall into the garden, licking his chops and looking insufferably pleased with himself. "Good boy," Shepard said, leaning down to give him an affectionate scratch on the back.

Garrus picked up one of the younger children in each arm. "We've got to get them all back inside. Once they're in, seal every window and every door," he told Rinus, in tones that were clearly a command.

Shepard clapped the younger turian on the shoulder. "You did good today. You did your training proud." She told him, keeping an eye on the woods.

"Thanks." Rinus looked down at the shotgun in his hands. "I don't feel like I did much."

"You kept your head, got through the battle, took a few shots at the enemy, and administered first aid. Not bad for your first real skirmish."

Rinus' head came up, and she could see he hadn't really thought of it like that. He'd probably expected to be the hero in his first battle. What he'd done was _serve_. "What's next?" he asked.

"What Garrus just said," Shepard told him, picking up Serana. "_Your_ job, right now, is to protect the family until they recover and the all-clear gets sounded," she told him firmly, before hustling the girl indoors. As she did so, Shepard couldn't help but be aware of Gavius' eyes, watching them from where he stood, frozen, by the shuttle.

Once everyone was in the house, she saw that Solana had dug up old armor from somewhere in the house for both her mother and herself. _Turian attics must be full of old armor and uniforms. I wonder if they keep Christmas decorations up there, too. Or whatever the local equivalent is._ "Everyone will probably recover inside of twenty minutes or so, if they don't get stung again," Shepard told the women, basing her estimate on how fast survivors had recovered after the attack on Horizon. "Set your omnitools to emit _this_ oscillating frequency. Might protect everyone a bit. Not as well as when it resonates through armor, though." She was in full command mode, securing this area, and getting ready to move to the next. Wherever that might be.

The radio crackled to life at her wrist; she'd taken her helmet off indoors. "Mordin here. Is anyone receiving?"

A flood of relief washed through her. "Professor. Good to hear your voice. Where are you?"

"Pinned down in regional broadcast facility. Attempting to transmit seeker swarm deterrent signal to local area. Situation problematic."

Garrus smiled, reloading his rifle and sliding it back into its harness on his back. "That's why I like you, Mordin. You've always got a plan."

"Any idea why they're attacking _here_?" Shepard asked.

"Have new theory, yes."

Garrus shook his head. "This ought to be good."

"Collectors likely interested in humans due to genetic variability. Same reason humans made good test subjects for krogan efforts to reverse engineer genophage on Tuchanka. Collectors were once Protheans. Quad strand DNA, not like human double helix. But also showed great genetic variability between populations. Each colony distinct, identifiable, even from fragments of remains available for study today." Mordin paused, and they could hear gunfire over the radio.

Shepard unbuckled her chest armor, trying to get a look at her shoulder wound. Garrus lightly smacked her hands away, and produced a first aid kit with sterile gauze and more medi-gel. "Mordin, that doesn't explain very much," she said, gritting her teeth as Garrus pulled the sodden shirt that they'd used as a bandage out of her rapidly-clotting blood.

"But it does! Of all galactic populations, humans have the most genetic variability. Turians have next most. Krogans have very little variability. Made genophage creation much easier." More gunfire, and cries of pain. When Mordin spoke again, he sounded winded. "Asari have least variability of any known species. Asexual reproduction. Only randomization, new variables come from reproduction with other species. At a guess, will be targeted last, or simply destroyed outright, not harvested. Also explains Collector interest in acquiring your body, specifically, Shepard. Especially efforts to recover your corpse during the six month period you were dead." More gunfire.

Shepard winced. She hadn't really wanted Garrus' family to hear it put _that_ way. A quick glance told her that the adults, at least, had heard and understood it. "And here I thought just every alien out there was after my body," Shepard muttered, very quietly.

Mordin went on, obliviously, "You were able to receive data from Prothean device directly. Suggests potential of human genetic variability close _enough_ to Protheans, to Collectors, that they might _replace_ Collectors as servants of the Reapers." A long burst from a submachine gun rattled the speaker on her wrist. "Need extraction team, now!"

Shepard and Garrus met each others' eyes. She saw in his eyes the death of his species, the enslavement of her own, and the steely resolution to prevent that, at all costs. "Well," Garrus said, after a moment, resting his rifle on his shoulder. "Let's go get the Professor."

"Will you all be okay here?" Shepard asked the family, getting quick nods from the people who were currently _capable_ of nodding. She pointed at Rinus. "I'll be back for that shotgun. Keep 'em safe."

They headed out toward the shuttle. Shepard keyed up the radio once more, hoping against hope that she could get through to the _Normandy. _"You copy any of that, EDI?"

To her surprise, the AI responded. "Yes, Commander. Although I am currently tasked to capacity, I can give you some guidance to the Professor's location."

Garrus slid into the pilot's seat, and Shepard buckled herself in as well. Urz leaped into the doorway, and settled at her feet, jaws lolling wide to show his fangs. "Joker, what the hell is going on up there?"

Joker's voice crackled back over the radio. "EDI and I are becoming parents, Commander. In other medical news, Tali's having kittens."

Garrus paused in the middle of the ignition sequence, "Oh, that does _not_ sound good."

"You want to explain that, Joker?" Shepard's voice was taut. Now was not a good time for Moreau's sense of humor.

"Commander Alenko agreed to our plan," EDI replied quickly. "He also found a turian admiral willing to approve it."

"What plan?" Shepard demanded.

"None of the _Normandy_-class ships that were ready for combat had crews or pilots aboard, Commander," Joker said. "So. . . EDI is cloning copies of herself into their computer cores. They'll be running and ready to fight in a half hour. Just have to get their baby shoes on."

Garrus kicked the shuttle into the sky, following the navigation coordinates EDI had provided. "Congratulations," he told them, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "You two will make lovely parents."

"Thanks, Garrus! I'm thinking of putting a baby registry together, but I just can't figure out what type of pacifiers to get them."

"I can scarcely believe a turian officer actually agreed to allow _illegal_ AIs on board any of his ships," Garrus added.

"I think he took one look at the shipyards that are currently in flames and decided he'd rather be on court-martialed for allowing Ais than try to explain how he lost the damn war." Joker's voice was grim.

Shepard cut through the by-play. "All right, as soon as those ships are ready, I want you two to hit the Collector ship that's currently on the surface near here. Take out its engines, but don't blow it sky-high unless I tell you to. If possible, we're going to fight our way in, release any captives they've taken, and datamine their computers." She paused. "I'm hoping you can simply take their entire memory core, EDI, but if you have to pick, aim for topics that include human genetics, turian genetics, and on down the line in terms of each species' capacity for genetic variation. Anything regarding their plans would also be helpful."

Garrus pointed out, quietly, "We have to get there first."

Shepard sighed. "Right, one problem at a time. Let's go get Mordin out."

He nodded. "It's what we do."

As the shuttle took off, Pilana watched from one of the sealed windows. The she picked up a knife, and Garrus' statue from the spirit table. She sat down beside Gavius, who was still frozen in stasis, and sighed, feeling the exhaustion from her illness sweep through her. But for the moment, her hands were steady, and she had work to do. It wasn't much. She couldn't hold a gun anymore. But she had children who could.

She began to cut into the soft wood. This is what she could do with the time she had left. She would ensure that life went on, in its accustomed pace and its accustomed way. She would leave them a place that would always welcome them, always love them. She looked at her dear, stubborn husband, and smiled. "Did you finally see it, during the firefight, Gavius?" she asked. "They have the same spirit."

Pilana pulled the statue back, and peered at it. She'd never known what to put in her son's hands as he stood there, straight and tall and unbending. Now she did, and the sword was beginning to take shape under her skilled fingers. "It isn't often that I get to talk when you have no choice but to listen, my dear one," she told Gavius. "It's a fine, strong spirit, and it flows between them, and whoever else walks their path. It might not be the spirit of justice, but something equally powerful, and equally difficult."

She was satisfied with the rough shape of the sword for the moment; she'd go back later to add in the fine details. Now, however, she needed to cut in the small, slender form of the human female, who only came to her son's shoulder, but held such indomitable fire inside of her. The features were alien, but she wanted to do this from memory, while it was fresh, while she could still see it with her heart, not from some vid feed. She had to convey the truth as she'd seen it, not some camera's lies. A camera couldn't see the spirit, after all.

"What . . . spirit?" Gavius managed to ask, his lips barely moving through the stasis that still locked him in place. He sounded as tired as she felt. C-Sec had worn him down over the decades, embittered him. He'd been fighting a cancer of the spirit for at least as long as she'd been fighting a disease of the body.

"The spirit of truth, my dear one," she told him, setting down her knife to take his limp hand in her own. "Truth is such a fragile, delicate thing, but so powerful when used correctly. I hope it will sustain them on their path." She held up the spirit figure for him to see. "Have I captured it in them?"


	14. Epilogue

**Chapter 14: Epilogue**

Two years later, Spectre Garrus Vakarian brought the _Normandy_ to Mindoir. He'd been out on the newly-reformed Council's business for two weeks, and was anxious to be home. Coasting in from the mass relay in the system's Kuiper belt to the inner planets would still take sixteen hours, and he didn't want to chance an FTL transmission to the planet. There were still rogue elements from Cerberus and Terra Firma out there, not to mention millions of angry asari. In the first attack on the Citadel, four years ago now, Shepard had sacrificed turian and human lives the save the _Destiny Ascension_; in the final war, she'd let the asari homeworld burn to save Earth and Palaven. Some asari had taken that decision rather personally, so the location of the family home—and the new training base for the Spectres—was a tightly-held secret.

The asari hadn't liked the new Council much, either. It was far too representative for their tastes, and that representation included races they had wronged, including the krogan and the rachni, in addition to the elcor, volus, hanar, quarians, _geth_, humans, turians, and salarians. The old precept that a seat on the Council meant "being able to look after your own interests," however, was pretty much a moot point when the _quarians_ had a homeworld, and the _asari_ did not.

He had plenty of time to brood, up in the captain's quarters, so empty of her presence. There was a good reason, of course. The best reason in the universe, really. But he'd fed the fish, done his reports, listened to music, read a book, and really, there was nothing left to do. So it was a welcome surprise when the terminal chimed. "Secure FTL transmission from Tuchanka coming through," Joker told him.

"I'll take it here," Garrus replied, and opened the channel. "Wrex?"

"Garrus," the old krogan rumbled. "Glad I caught you. Mordin's done with his work here, at least for the moment. He's ready to head back to his home away from home. Just in time, huh?"

Mordin had decided, without official sanction from his government, that one of his two retirement projects would be adjusting Clan Urdnot's response to the genophage. In addition to all of Wrex's reforms, there were now rumors going around Tuchanka that the gods must favor Urdnot's changes, because their fertility rate was now hovering at ten percent viability—a giant leap upwards from the old one in a thousand ratio. This was strongly inclining many krogan clans to ally with Urdnot, and start work on rebuilding their world, rather than hunkering down in its shattered remains.

"Just in time," Garrus agreed. "I'm going to be lucky to be there myself. The Council put in a request for someone to take out a batarian pirate base last month. We had trouble finding the damn thing, until yesterday." He paused. "It won't be a problem anymore."

Wrex chuckled. ''Bout time. I'll come visit, once we know everything turns out all right."

"She'll be glad to see you. Says she misses her three musketeers."

"I have no idea what the hell that means."

"Human book. Bunch of fighters in their early gunpowder era, serving their king. Usually broke, since they never get paid, always have to save the day from some political crap, quarrel, argue, but always wind up fighting together when it really counts." Garrus held up a datapad. "I've been trying to work my way through it on these long trips, but there's way too much history for me to understand it all."

"I've had enough history to last me for a lifetime. I'd rather have a future. You concentrate on _yours_, turian. Wrex out."

Garrus tapped the terminal, and checked to see how much longer they'd be. Well, he'd burned off an hour or two. Fourteen more to go. They _could_ go faster if they engaged the FTL drive, but then they wouldn't be stealthed. He sighed, and opened the book again. The translation from antique French into modern turian was not a very good one, but if nothing else, it would make the time tick by a little faster.

He could wrap his head around Wrex as Athos; big as a mountain, slow to speak, but wise when he did; a sad, noble past, and a thirst for revenge. A man, of any species, whom you would want at your back.

Mordin was the same, really. A little smaller, perhaps, and definitely more talkative. But surely just as much a brother. Lilitu had told him that she figured Mordin would make a good Aramis. "Aramis was torn between two sides of himself, the fighter and the priest. He did things in the name of his church in the later books that Dumas wrote, that the other Musketeers considered unforgivable. But in the end, it was always the same little band of brothers, fighting together against all odds."

"And who am I, then?"

"D'Artagnan, of course!" She'd started laughing at his expression, and explained, "He starts off a hot-headed idealist, but matures into the captain of the King's guard. He's cynical and he's seen too much, but still has the idealist inside." She'd grinned at him. "That would leave me as Porthos, though, and I really don't think that fits. I think you'll see why, when you get far enough into it." Then she'd signed off the encrypted transmission. That had been a month ago. Two trips ago, with only five days at home in between them. _Damn it._

Eventually, the _Normandy_ settled into orbit on the far side of Mindoir's single, large moon. Garrus made his way to the shuttle, and was surprised by the number of crew who had gathered to see him off. There'd been changes in the _Normandy _crew over the past two years, of course. Half the crew was turian now, for one thing. Most of the old, familiar faces of squadmates had disappeared. Legion had re-integrated to his people. Grunt had gone back to Tuchanka. Tali and Reegar were back with the Migrant Fleet, working to resettle the quarian homeworld.

One thing remained constant, of course. As he entered the shuttle and sealed its hatch, Joker's voice came through the comm panel at the front of the Kodiak. "We'll keep the lights on for you."

"Safe journey, Spectre,"EDI chimed in.

The shuttle dropped out of the bay, and headed in a wide arc towards the planet's surface. It was a jade world, seen from above, its settlements only tiny pinpricks of light here and there on the ground. He broke through the atmosphere, and stopped by one settlement to pick up animal feed and veterinary supplies, a necessary cover activity for anyone approaching the Spectre training facility, and set a course for a mountain range on one of the northern continents—a remote area, essentially inaccessible other than by air.

It was, officially, anyway, the Roland B. Shepard Memorial Biodiversity Area; ten thousand acres of mountains, desert, and forest. Hot enough for a turian or a krogan to feel at home on the western, desert side of the mountains; cool and damp enough on the forested eastern slopes for a salarian or an asari to be comfortable. The mountains themselves got fifty feet of snow over the course of a winter. It was, therefore, a perfect training facility for Spectres, representing a wide variety of environments.

They'd argued for a month over the right location. Chasca has been considered, but its environmental conditions were too limited. Amaranthine had been too cold, and its atmosphere too toxic. Ontarom had been both too hot, and with a moon in an unstable orbit, not permanent enough. Eletania was beautiful, but toxic. Joab still needed heavy terraforming. So a garden world had been needed, and Mindoir had been an easy choice.

Shepard had designed the facility around the small town at the foot of the mountains, which consisted of environmental biologists and their families. The town was both their cover and their responsibility. "Spectres have always been based off of the Citadel, floating in space," she'd said at the opening of the facilities. "Unaccountable for their actions, detached from the people they're supposed to protect. No longer. You're going to see those people every day you spend here. You're going to see what my friend Mordin Solus likes to call _the small picture_."

Garrus dropped off the supplies at the depot in the little town, and grinned when he realized that one of the scientists newly appointed to the staff was his brother-in-law, Allardus, who'd arrived to try to work on ways to integrate dextro and levo plants into the same ecological systems, side by side. "If we can work it out here, we can work it out on any planet out there," Allardus told him enthusiastically. "No more having to import everything from Palaven. Greater viability for our species. More integration into the galactic whole."

"You're starting to sound like Mordin."

"He _does_ rub off on people after a while, doesn't he? I'll give your best to Solana. She and the kids would be here, but with your parents still not doing so well—"

"I understand. Give them all my love. Chances are, we'll have some news for them in the next week or so, anyway."

Finally, he broke loose and headed for the house. It was, as she'd pointed out at they designed it, pretty close to what her parents had dreamed of building on this planet—a Roman-style villa, with turian touches and modern technology for comfort. There was a transparent, retractable roof over the atrium garden, for instance, both to keep out the worst of the winter weather and for security purposes, but the structure itself was built in warm, terra-cotta stone. It wasn't just their family home, of course; it was the headquarters of the re-formed Spectres, too.

He opened the front door, nodded to the security mechs and the guard behind the front desk, and tried not to trip over Urz, who'd emerged from a shadow to inspect him minutely before allowing him further into the house. "Down, boy. It's just me."

Their bedroom was on the ground floor. He poked his head in the door, and smiled. Dr. Chakwas was adjusting an IV needle, while his wife slept, propped up in bed. On the nightstand, a series of monitors chirped and beeped softly. The older woman looked up as the door opened, and put a finger to her lips. "I'll be done in a moment. She's doing fairly well, all things considered." Urz padded into the room, and, after giving Dr. Chakwas a sniff, leaped up on the bed and settled his bulk over the dozing woman's feet.

As Dr. Chakwas stepped out into the hall, Garrus perched on the edge of the bed, and took his wife's slender fingers in his own large hand. "Hey."

She opened her eyes. "Hey." Lilu woke up a little further. "You finally chased down the batarians?"

"Yeah. They won't be a problem anymore." He leaned down and gave her a nip on the neck.

"You leave any survivors?"

"You didn't send Garrus, mild-mannered Spectre and hero of the galaxy. You sent Archangel." Which meant that he'd worn his old, scarred armor, and the helmet that concealed his identity; the psychological impact of seeing the _"damned turian who can't die"_ on pirates and slavers sometimes outweighed other considerations.

It also meant that everything in a mile radius was probably going to die.

When she frowned, he reassured her, "You asked for survivors, you got survivors. Two of them, the better to take a message to their bosses. Slaves were released, and the Alliance sent a ship in after me to mop everything up. You can look at the vid feed from my eyepiece later." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Assuming your blood pressure won't go up from it. I got yelled at by Dr. Chakwas the last time." He was fairly sure it wouldn't disturb her too much; he'd set up his perch a kilometer away, observed the camp for several hours, waiting for nightfall, and then started by shooting the slaver's captain between both sets of eyes. Then the lieutenants. Then, as chaos started to break out, anyone standing near prisoners, working his way out from the center of the camp to its periphery.

The last two, he'd taken out as they were running for a ground vehicle, trying to get to their nearby ship. He'd approached them as they were groaning on the ground, kicked their weapons away, and given them very simple directions. He had a pretty good feeling that the tracking devices he'd installed on their ship would lead the Spectres to their main base. But that was not his problem. Not today, anyway.

She rolled onto her side, looking tired, but playful. Urz grumbled and moved over, and the blankets fell from her. Her belly looked simply enormous under her thin nightgown. "There are other things you could do to elevate my blood pressure."

"Not for a while longer, I can't." His tone was rueful, and he nipped at her wrist lightly. "Oh, I forgot. Wrex says that Mordin should be here shortly."

"Good." She sat up, which clearly took some effort, and then took his hand, and put it on her belly. "The little monsters seem to think they need more space. I think one of them wants to colonize my ribs."

"Definitely a good little imperialist," he joked, keeping his tone as light as he could, but he knew he couldn't quite keep the worry out of his expression.

This, of course, was Mordin's _other_ retirement project. Turians and humans were both viviparous, meaning that they gave birth to live offspring. That had reduced some of the challenge for Mordin, but using Collector technology to get levo and dextro amino acids to play nicely together had been a technical problem that had taken him close to a year to resolve. The first successful eggs had sat quietly in a dish for twenty minutes, before dividing. And then dividing again.

"Much of fetal development is not controlled by the genes, but by the uterine environment, mother's body," Mordin had explained as he'd injected the invisible cargo into Lilitu's stomach with a fine hypodermic needle. "Unknown how long gestation will be. Human norm, nine months. Turian norm, eleven. Probably wiser to plan for c-section extraction."

Mordin had made pleased sounds over the initial scans, and all the follow-ups. Garrus had been unable to figure out what any of the blobs actually represented—head, arms, legs, all looked disconcertingly, even alarmingly alike. They'd started with three planted ovae; one of the fetuses had miscarried three months in. Since then, she'd been on bed rest—not a good place for someone who'd spent her life on the move, always active. And Spectre work had been absolutely out of the question. Even with all the precautions they'd taken, she'd almost lost a second child at six months.

Even if they succeeded this time, Garrus wasn't sure he wanted to try this particular experiment again. There were, as she'd once pointed out, plenty of fully human and turian children who needed parents, too.

He felt a subtle movement under his fingers, and from her reaction, yes, one of their little imperialists was indeed on the move again. "Strong, aren't they?"

Her smile was proud, but tired. "Yeah. Yeah, they do seem to be." She added, closing her eyes again, "Though, for the record, I'm glad it's twins. I wouldn't want our kid to be the _only_ one of its kind_, _but, on sober reflection, I _really_ don't want to do this part again." She glanced out the window. "Can you take me for my walk around the garden? They've got me as sedentary as an egg here, but I'm allowed fifteen minutes of walking a day."

He helped her with her slippers and robe, and, sliding an arm around her waist for support, helped her take her slow, shuffling steps through the atrium garden. A dozen Spectres and Spectre candidates passed by as they did so, all of various races. All smiled and waved, and went on with their business. Eventually, she tired again, and settled back down in their bed, asking for her datapad so that she could review reports.

She fell asleep over the third one, and Garrus extracted the pad from her hands, going through the reports himself. A tap came at the door. Urz, dozing at the foot of the bed, lifted his head as well. Their bedroom was, Garrus reflected, between the Spectres in the compound and the protective varren that shared their living quarters, probably the safest place in the entire galaxy. "Enter," he said, quietly, pushing back from the desk.

Another turian stood in the doorway, wearing the black and white facepaint that indicated his colony origins were similar to Nihlus'. Garrus idly wondered if the two were clanmates. "Livanus?" he asked, after a moment's thought. "How's training going?"

"A lot differently than I expected," the male told him. "It's nothing like the old system, that's for certain."

"Under the old system, you probably wouldn't have been recruited," Garrus told him frankly, still keeping his voice down in deference to his sleeping wife. "We're looking for different qualities now. Sure, still the best of the best, in weapons, demolitions, and other special operations skills, but there are other factors now. First, the ability to think outside the box. Second, the ability to make decisions without having to run every one up the chain of command. But third, we're looking for strong ethics. For the ability to make the _right_ decisions. If you don't have that, you wind up as another Saren." He grinned. "I probably would have been just as bad as Saren if I had gone into the Spectres before I met her." He nodded towards the bed.

"Neither of you is quite what I expected," Livanus admitted. "But that's not why I'm here. I noticed a name on the gate entry list, which pulled up a flag in the security files. A human named Sarah Williams?"

Garrus went from relaxed to rigid. "Where is she?"

"I'm holding her down at the security office."

Garrus opened the desk drawer, making sure his pistol was still there and loaded. "Bring her here-shackled. I would dearly love to know how she got to this supposedly secure location. Hell, I'd love to know how she slipped out of sight a year ago."

Livanus nodded and left, suddenly looking a lot grimmer, himself.

From the bed, behind him, Lilu said, quietly, "You'd have been worse than Saren, you know. You're hell of a lot smarter, not to mention better than he was. Plus, you have something he lacked entirely: imagination."

"How long have you been awake?"

"Long enough." Her eyes were tired and sad.

"Let me handle it."

"Don't go too far." She settled back, appearing to close her eyes again.

Livanus returned, this time with a short human female, whose arms were securely shackled behind her. Garrus got a glimpse of what had been used, and nodded in approval. Two sets of handcuffs; one at the wrists, and a second, with a longer chain, at the elbows. It was not comfortable, but there was no way in which she could step her hands in front of her body. Her feet were also shackled. Livanus had clearly not wasted his time in C-Sec.

"What's this about?" Williams asked as soon as she entered the room. She sounded frightened. "I'm a member of the biology team. I'm new, and I got lost. I didn't know I was on your facility grounds until they picked me up and took me to the gatehouse for processing."

Garrus studied her silently. He still had trouble with human features sometimes, but he thought he could see a familial resemblance there. "Sarah Williams?" he asked.

"Yeah. That's my name."

He pointed across the room. "Do you know what that is?"

Clearly confused, she turned to look at the spirit table in the corner of the room. There were a handful of statues there—the one his mother had carved of the two of them. One for the spirit of justice, another for the spirit of truth. There was a picture of Shepard's family, frozen forever in time. A crystal globe glittered there as well, a model of the asari homeworld, held aloft by a single female hand made of silver. It had been a slightly reproachful gift from Liara. And finally, there was a holograph, which, every three seconds, changed to a different face. "See anyone there that you recognize?" he asked, after a moment.

He knew the order of the images all too well. Three more images passed by, and then Ashley Williams' face appeared. The sudden exhalation from the human woman was all the proof he really needed.

"Those are all the people who've died under Shepard's or my direct command," he told her, as Williams was replaced by, in rapid succession, the twenty people killed on the original _Normandy_, ending with Pressly. Replaced, in turn, by Erash, Monteague, Mierin . . . the members of his own squad on Omega. Replaced by others. Too many others. "We keep it there to remember them. To remind us to make the best decisions we can."

She turned back towards him, and her eyes were full with anger. "And was sending my sister to die the best decision?"

"I don't know," he told her. "Was threatening to end the life of my wife with _seven bullets_ the best decision you've ever made?"

She went absolutely still.

He stood, and held out the datapad in his hand, letting her see the text of her long-ago message. "My wife is, fortunately for you, all about second chances. Be aware, however, that _I_ don't allow third ones. You've broken Council law and breached a secure facility. You've threatened the life of a Spectre. By all rights, you should spend the next twenty to thirty years in prison, at the very least." He stared down at her. "Explain to me why you shouldn't." Y_ou know the location of our home. You've threatened the life of my wife, and now my children. If this were three years ago, and if this were Omega, you would already be dead._

She seemed to read something of this in his eyes, and shrank in on herself. "I wasn't here to hurt anyone!"

"Somehow, I just can't believe that."

"I just wanted to look her in the eye and ask her why she sent my sister to die, and not—"

"And not who? Some worthless alien?" The voice came from behind them. Lilitu sat up in the bed, and Williams' eyes widened.

"You're pregnant?" Her voice held a mix of surprise and borderline revulsion.

"It's not exactly public knowledge," the commander of the Spectres told her dryly. "Now, listen up, because I'm only going to say this once. I had a choice between two Alliance crewmen that I could have sent on the secondary team on Virmire. Whoever was in charge of the team _had_ to be Alliance, otherwise there would have been no clear chain of command." She paused, and her voice softened a little. "You can't have it both ways, Sarah. You can't resent the non-humans on my team for having too much control _and_ want them to be in charge at the same time."

Garrus tried not to snort at that one. The irrationality of hatred meant that someone really _could_ think both things at the same time, and wouldn't see any inconsistencies in their own views at all. And it wasn't as if they hadn't heard this same question, phrased differently, hundreds of times now. And each time, he reflected, the answer was just as difficult as the one before. There was no way to rehearse for this.

Williams tried again, "But why _my sister_?"

In his memory, Garrus heard Liara, Samara, the asari Councilor, each asking the same thing. "Why _our_ world? Why did you chose our people to die, and not some other?"

The answer hadn't been any easier then_. _

_His wife looked at the asari sorrowfully. "You're not going to like my answer, Liara."_

"_Tell me anyway. I have to know!"_

_Lilu sighed. "Your people represent stagnation."_

"_What?"_

"_That was the short version. I'm sorry, but you have the least genetic variation of any galactic population. That means that when stresses occur, you're the most prone to being wiped out in any event, because that lack of variation means that you can't adapt quickly. Combine that with the extremely long life spans making for less reproduction overall, and you have, evolutionarily speaking, a species that has almost no ability to adapt quickly or well."_

"_That's Mordin's answer, not yours." Liara's voice was accusing._

"_It's __**part**__ of my answer. I told you, you weren't going to like it." He could see how carefully she was picking her words as she went on. "Culturally, the asari are stagnant as well. Not all asari, but the vast majority, believe in doing things the way they've been done for ten thousand years. Not exactly an adaptive trait."_

"_So you consigned all our art, our history, our culture, our science to the Reaper's fires because we're not __**flexible**__ enough?"_

_Frustrated, Lilu had started to pace. "Your people have __**two dozen **__ colony worlds, most of them established thousands of years ago, Liara. You haven't been wiped out by a long shot. If your people are strong enough, and adaptable enough, they can recover from this, and we'll be here to help them. But I had to make a choice. I couldn't be everywhere at once."_

_Weeks later, it had been Samara's questions that they'd faced. "So it had nothing at all to do with the fact that Earth and Palaven were in danger as well? Is mere emotion why my two remaining daughters died? Or was it something else—your distaste for what misguided asari have forced on you in the past? What . . . my daughter. . . almost forced on you?" _

"_Of __**course**__ Earth and Palaven being in danger had something to do with it!" his wife had snapped, finally angry. "There was no way to separate the personal from the decision. Of __**course**__ I saved my own people, and my husband's people first. Anyone who'd tell you otherwise would be lying." _

"_Your honesty humbles me, Commander," the justicar had told her. "And while I may never forgive you, I must respect your judgment of my people. I will meditate on what, if anything, may be done to save us from our own rigidity."_

All of this flashed through his mind as he crossed the room and lit a candle next to the crystal globe, before turning once more. Lilitu frowned at the other human woman now. "What do you want me to say, Sarah? That I didn't like her? I didn't. That there were personal reasons behind the decision? In this case, there weren't." She let the words sit there for a moment. "I could have rescued her, at the cost of maybe losing the bomb that was going to destroy Saren's facility. If I didn't go to the bomb site, _everyone_ there could have died. I _respected_ the hell out of Ashley's skills. She was a damned fine infantryman, who knew how to serve, and knew that in serving, it might come at the cost of her life someday. If there was anyone who could have gotten through that fight, it would have been Ashley. She knew what I was asking of her when it went down, and she didn't flinch. You should be proud of her, Sarah." The commander paused. "I know she was proud of you. The best parts of her showed when she talked about her family."

Tears were starting to leak down Williams' face, and she lowered her head. Garrus nodded to Livanus, who turned her around and escorted her out.

Alone once more, Shepard took her pistol out from under the pillow, and returned it, safety in place, to the nightstand. "What do you think we should do with her?" she asked him.

"I'd prefer to see her locked up someplace. Ensuring that she doesn't leave the valley will do for now. I also want a psych evaluation done on her. See if she's going to continue to be unstable." He gave his wife a wary look. "I know you're going to incline towards the merciful on this one."

"Because I feel guilty about Ashley?"

"That, too." He hesitated. "Don't let it sway you too much. There's more at stake here than just us."

"I know. We can see if we can get her a mild amnesiac treatment to scrub the location of this base out of her mind. I don't like the treatments being overused, especially since it's a Cerberus tech, but there's only so much trust I can place in someone like her."

_Thank the spirits._ He squeezed her hands gently.

**Later**

Mordin arrived two days later, with his old assistant, Daniel, from the Omega clinic, in tow. They'd brought enough supplies to cover any emergency that the two of them could think of, and, after yet even more tests, and a low-voiced conference with Dr. Chakwas, who'd been overseeing the problematic pregnancy, decided that, for the health of the mother, it was time. One of the rooms in the house was a sterile lab, which they converted into a surgery; without much fanfare at all, the children were born.

Garrus wasn't quite sure what to expect when Mordin handed him the first blanket-wrapped infant. He wasn't sure if the mix of species would be attractive or simply disconcerting. What he saw was, simply, their child. Fine black down covered the scalp of this infant male, while fine white down covered the scalp of his twin sister. The facial structure was largely turian, with deep-set eyes . . . but the skin was soft and clearly human. Under that pale, soft skin, he could see a tracery of fine blue veins. The teeth were hidden under the violet-tinged gums, but had a predatory shape, as far as he could tell, and there were no mandibles. The child might not be able to eat meat immediately, but he might be able to nurse.

He caught a hand, waving outside of the blanket, and counted the impossibly tiny fingers. Five. But each was clawed. His son opened his eyes, and gave his father a vague, unfocused look, out of blue irises.

The various doctors were still busy with the second infant, counting digits, assessing coloration, listening to the heart rate, and checking its weight. There'd be scans later, to determine the size and configuration of the internal organs, doubtless. But for right now, Garrus sat down on the chair beside the operating table, feeling a little weak at the knees, and held the boy out so his wife could see him. Then Dr. Chakwas brought the second child, a girl, over to the pair of Spectres. "Hey, guys," the new mother said, taking her daughter in her arms, her voice soft. "Now what are we going to do with you?"

_Author's Note_

First, I'd like to thank all the people who posted lovely and gracious comments to my first fiction. Second, I'd like to thank the _many_ people who've added _The Spirit of Truth_ to their favorite stories list, or who have added me to their favorite authors notifications list. It means a lot to me to know that you enjoy what I've done so far.

I'm posting this to let you know that I'm uploading a new story, a continuation, called _The Spirit of Redemption._ It's not finished yet, and it goes against my grain to post something that doesn't have a full beginning, middle, and end, but I'm excited about it, and hope that you'll enjoy it.

It's set three years after the epilogue of _The Spirit of Truth,_ and takes place in the same continuity. Thus, is features Lilitu Shepard (yes, I've corrected the spelling of her name going forwards) and Garrus Vakarian, as well as Lantar Sidonis and some other familiar faces from _ME1_ and _ME2_. It also features the hybrid kids, so if your blood pressure goes up at the mere thought, please, don't read it. I don't know if someone really can have a stroke from nerdrage, but I'd feel terribly responsible if someone actually did keel over from it.

No, wait; I wouldn't. :-P

All chapters are subject to revision; I think I've got all of Chekov's guns placed on their respective mantelpieces at the moment, but I reserve the right to add something in as it hits me between the eyes.


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